🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.”

~ Neil Postman

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Greetings dear newsletter subscribers,

Thank you, again, for your forbearance with me! I am excited to finally begin our study of Neil Postman's classic work, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business! This week we are looking at the book's "Introduction."

If you haven't already done so, please follow me on X. This link is to the Gadfly Academy community on X, which is where I would like to focus most of our conversation (even if you're not on X, you will still be able to follow along with the discussion). I am available on other platforms as well, so if you'd like to connect/converse on other platforms, you can find me by clicking here.

OK...that's it for housekeeping...so, without further ado...

Amusing Ourselves to Death was first published in 1985, and then re-published in 2005. For the 20^th anniversary edition Neil Postman’s son, Andrew Postman, wrote an “Introduction” to his father’s book and his chief interest was in trying to determine to what extent Postman’s book was still relevant to the average American student in 2005.

In polling students who had read his father’s book, Andrew Postman found that his father’s book was arguably more relevant and appreciated by students in 2005 than in 1985. He offers a variety of feedback from students, but this one from one of their teachers is particularly insightful: “kids come to the conclusion that TV is almost exclusively interested in presenting show business and sensationalism and in making money. Amazing as it seems, they had never realized that before.” (“Introduction,” p. xi)

A teacher of Postman’s book ran a 24 hour media fast experiment, which proved to be one of the most memorable experiences of students’ time in their class, “One wrote, 'I thought to do things I hadn't thought to do ever.' The experience changes them. Some are so affected that they determine to fast on their own, one day a month.” (“Introduction,” p. xiii)

In concluding his “Introduction,” Andrew Postman offers a number of insights that I think are valuable to mention here:

1) “Dad was a lover of history, a champion for collective memory and what we now quaintly refer to as ‘civilizing influences,’ but he did not live in the past. His book urges us to claim a way to be more alert and engaged.” (“Introduction,” p. xiii)

2) “[M]y father asked such good questions that they can be asked of non-television things, of all sorts of transforming developments and events that have happened since 1985… His questions can be asked about all technologies and media. What happens to us when we become infatuated with and then seduced by them? Do they free us or imprison us? Do they improve or degrade democracy? Do they make our leaders more accountable or less so? Our system more transparent or less so? Do they make us better citizens or better consumers? Are the trade-offs worth it?” (“Introduction,” p. xv)

3) “A student of Dad's, a teacher himself, says his own students are more responsive to Amusing Ourselves to Death, not less, than they were five or ten years ago. ‘When the book first came out, it was ahead of its time, and some people didn't understand its reach,’ he says. ‘It's a twenty-first century book published in the twentieth century.’” (“Introduction,” p. xv)

It has now been forty years since the publication of Amusing Ourselves to Death, and twenty years since the twentieth anniversary edition. As his son points out, at the heart of Postman’s work are timeless questions regarding our relationship with technology (which Postman develops more broadly in his next book Technopoly). These questions, along with Postman’s works, become increasingly relevant as our lives become increasingly bound up with the technologies that we’re creating and increasingly dependent on.

Finally, it’s important to point out that there is, truly, no putting the genie back in the bottle. As Andrew Postman wrote about his father, “he did not live in the past. His book urges us to claim a way to be more alert and engaged.” Neither Postman, nor I, imagine that we can somehow return to some kind of edenic past.

If we can’t go back in time, what can we do? Firstly, we can “be more alert and engaged,” about the nature of technology, how it affects our culture, society, and each of us as individuals. I would encourage you to share these ideas with your friends and family. It is only through a shared awareness of what is happening that any kind of larger scale change can take place. That said, at the same time, the only real change that will take place will take place individually and locally.

Secondly, we can work on clarifying what kind of life we want, and what our priorities are and where our real best interests lie. Most of us live lives that are not according to our vision for how life should be, and this is only natural as this is the world that we have inherited. It is only when we have clarity as to what our priorities are, that we can begin to shape our lives in different ways. It took us generations to get into the mess in which we find ourselves, and it will take us generations to get out of this mess. All good things take time.

Finally, once we understand how technology influences us, what is at stake, and what we really want (what will actually provide fulfillment), we can make life choices that incorporate technology informed by this understanding.

It is our goal to discover, to ask, and to attempt to answer these existential questions. Happily, we have guides who have considered these questions already, and we can learn from them. This is why we’re looking at Neil Postman and his excellent book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

For our next installment, please read Neil Postman’s brief “Foreword” as well as Chapter One of the twentieth anniversary edition of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Again, please join the conversation on X + on other platforms.

Have a great week/end...enjoy Neil Postman's excellent book...and reach out to me on socials if you have any thoughts/questions you'd like to share!

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!