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For centuries, before the invention of print, knowledge was passed down by an oral tradition. Plato, of course, was thinking about the transition from speech to print.
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Though Marxists, Freudians and others have tried to explain the descent, Postman feels they are missing a fundamental point offered by Plato centuries ago: the forms of human communication shape, “regulate and even dictate” that communication (6). But, he says, we still do not know “the story of the origin and meaning of this descent into a vast triviality” (6). His insights, he writes, are not extraordinary. The usefulness of business goods is less important than their display (4–5). Journalists must spend time with hair dryers instead of stories. Postman goes on what we would now call “a rant” - decrying the emphasis on artifice and display in politics, journalism, business, religion and education. The link and relevance to our present - with a former reality television star in the White House - is immediately made. The year, of course, is 1984 and the President is Ronald Reagan.
#Neil postman amusing ourselves to death movie
“As I write, the President of the United States is a former Hollywood movie actor” (4). His next line will make readers of 2018 take note. That is called quickly getting to the point. The result is we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death” (3–4). Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjunct of show business, large without protest or even much popular notice. “For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture n which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment. He says Las Vegas is now the most representative of all American cities.
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Go to: Ain't no need to hide, ain't no need to run.Postman gets right to his argument on the first page. Postman's text is presented here in the hope that it will encourage anyone who encounters this page to read the book, and in order to perhaps keep anyone looking for the text from visiting any paranoid, or worse, sites that might also use it. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.īut we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. Neil Postman - Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death Neil Postman - Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death
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