🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

~ Neil Postman

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Greetings!

I have already introduced the great scholar and writer Neil Postman in earlier newsletters and videos, if you’d like to watch that you can follow this link to my Neil Postman playlist.

As I mentioned last week, in the coming weeks and months I am going to be focused on going deeper into Postman’s work, beginning with his most popular book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Today’s newsletter will be focused on introducing this work.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was published in 1985 and early in the book Postman famously wrote about the year before the book was published (during which, undoubtedly, he was working on the book):

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.”

The publication of Postman’s book could not have been more timely, for Orwell’s book had had a dramatic influence on modern culture. Although mostly symbolic, western culture’s fixation on the year 1984 cannot be overstated. For those of us who remember the concern around Y2K, the culture’s fixation and concern regarding 1984 was similar, and perhaps even greater. As an aside, it’s worth noting the irony that Apple released their famous “1984 won’t be like 1984” ad during the Super Bowl in 1984.

Postman’s book addresses a number of existential issues affecting life in the modern world, but perhaps its core idea is that form limits content. What this means in practice is that any given medium can only support certain types of ideas. For example, rational argumentation, which thrives in written language, is undermined by television because of the nature of television, whose primary language is visual. As a result, when televised, most aspects of culture lose their depth, especially politics and religion.

Building on this idea, Postman uses the thought of media scholar Marshall McLuhan—specifically rephrasing his famous saying "the medium is the message" as "the medium is the metaphor.” In this way Postman illustrates how oral, literate, and televisual cultures vary significantly in their methods of processing and prioritizing information. He argues that each medium is suited to conveying distinct types of knowledge. The skills needed for rational analysis are notably diminished by watching television. While reading demands deep interactive engagement, television encourages passive participation.

These are just a few of the important concepts that Postman discusses. As I mentioned in the last installment, one of the many reasons I have chosen to begin with the work of Neil Postman is that his works are largely devoid of fluff. He is one of the clearest and most concise writers I have read, and although his books are relatively short, they are chock full of transformative insights.

Before I end today’s installment, I want to invite you to join the conversation about Neil Postman’s book on my X page. I will be posting on other platforms as well.

If you’d like to read along with us, for next week please read Andrew Postman’s “Introduction” to the twentieth anniversary edition of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death which was published in 2005.

I’m excited to re-read Neil Postman’s book with you, so if you haven’t already, please follow me on X and on other platforms…and I will see you soon!

Warmly,

Herman

PS: Do you know of someone who might be interested in joining our book study? If so, please forward this email on to them!