Reread Brave New World by Huxley. And the followup from 58, Brave New World Revisited, in which Huxley notes that were hurtling toward the universe of Brave New World dramatically faster than he had posited in the original. This led to: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (1985) a deeply disturbing text by educator Neil Postman. Postman describes the end of the Age of Reason, and the rise of the mind numbed Age of Entertainment. In this book, Postman gives a striking example: The first fifteen U.S. presidents could probably have walked down the street without being recognized by the average citizen, yet all these men would have been quickly known by their written words. However, the reverse is true today. The names of presidents or even famous preachers, lawyers, and scientists call up visual images, typically television images, but few, if any, of their words come to mind. The few that do almost exclusively consist of carefully chosen soundbites. Taking a chapter from McLuhan, Postman points out that form limits content. Whereas reading is an exercise that engages the entire intellect, the television heavy culture of today, engages only on a passive level, and content is limited by structure based in commercial viability. News as ratings fodder. Content is secondary at best. Which leads to a startling wakeup call. That in the Age of Entertainment, the abuses of Power are such that rights of the citizens are not infringed and repressed by force, as much as the citizens are conditioned by their entertainment media simply not to care. Is this sounding familiar? Our parents, growing up, used to limit our exposure to TV. Perhaps, they were right to do so, after all.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 04:43:25 +0000
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