🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.”

~ Neil Postman

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Greetings, dear newsletter subscribers,

Here's the latest installment of our study of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death...

Chapter Seven entitled, “Now…This,” considers the reality and consequences of living in an information environment that has become completely disjointed and discontinuous.

“We have become so accustomed to its discontinuities that we are no longer struck dumb, as any sane person would be, by a newscaster who having just reported that a nuclear war is inevitable goes on to say that he will be right back after this word from Burger King; who says, in other words, ‘Now . . . this.’ One can hardly overestimate the damage that such juxtapositions do to our sense of the world as a serious place. The damage is especially massive to youthful viewers who depend so much on television for their clues as to how to respond to the world. In watching television news, they, more than any other segment of the audience, are drawn into an epistemology based on the assumption that all reports of cruelty and death are greatly exaggerated and, in any case, not to be taken seriously or responded to sanely.

I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 104-105)

The question that Postman asks us to reflect on is: what effect does the disjointed and discontinuous nature of information that we learn from television (and especially from TikTok, and social media more generally) have on the way we think, structure, and live our lives? Attempts to answer this question are necessarily undermined by the fact that this is the world that we live in, that surrounds us.

The only way one can hope to find out what kind of effect it is having is to intentionally go on a technology detox, and to see what it is like to live outside of this ecosystem for awhile. Short of completely extracting ourselves from the modern world, this is the best we can do. That said, unfortunately even this will not give us a real sense of what it would be like to live outside this information ecosystem, as we have all been shaped by this ecosystem from our earliest days but again, this is the best we can do. At the end of this installment, we will look at what a technology detox might look like.

The New Tribalism

“My point is that we are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the ‘Now . . . this’ world of news—a world of fragments, where events stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to other events—that all assumptions of coherence have vanished. And so, perforce, has contradiction. In the context of no context, so to speak, it simply disappears. And in its absence, what possible interest could there be in a list of what the President says now and what he said then?” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 110)

We begin our journey, as it turns out, very deep down the rabbit hole. We were all raised in a disjointed media environment where the idea of “truth” has been massively undermined by the nature of visual culture. Without some sense of objectivity, all that we are left with is how we “feel” about a particular news item. And feelings, of course, are going to be largely determined by the environment and culture in which we were raised. The resulting cultural organization, almost necessarily, will develop along increasingly tribal lines, along with an increasing distrust of those who “feel” differently about any given topic.

The Cult of Personality

“Stated in its simplest form, it is that television provides a new (or, possibly, restores an old) definition of truth: The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition. ‘Credibility’ here does not refer to the past record of the teller for making statements that have survived the rigors of reality-testing. It refers only to the impression of sincerity, authenticity, vulnerability or attractiveness (choose one or more) conveyed by the actor/reporter.” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 101-102)

Our problem is not only that we have lost the objectivity of the Typographic Age, it is also that this problem is greatly magnified by our heightened individualism (and the consequent breakdown of our communities), as well as the invention of mass communication, which makes the “cult of personality” not only a possibility, but nearly an inevitability. In an oral culture, if the “credibility of the teller” was only a reflection of their impression of sincerity, if they were dishonest, their subterfuge could only go so far. Yes, it would be unfortunate for the small number of people they had managed to fool, but it would not result in cultural collapse. The invention of mass media has changed this, however. This is, of course, Postman’s concern: when society’s criteria for judging the honesty of a politician is based on how society feels about them, it is easy to see how mass manipulation and tyranny are not far away.

Technology Detox

As mentioned above, for each of us, the only way out of the dilemma is by trying to extract ourselves from the technology trap. I am going to discuss, in broad outlines, some aspects you may want to incorporate into a technology detox.

Clarifying the goals of one’s technology detox helps to judge the efficacy of the undertaking. Everyone has their own specific struggles, so before you begin, write down what, exactly, you’re hoping to get from your detox. Here are some obvious possibilities:

- Reduction of stress/anxiety

- Improvement of sleep and focus

- Spending meaningful time with people and in nature

Again, different people have different needs, inclinations, and struggles, the following are some of the practices that could be a part of your detox:

1) Track screen time (phone, laptop, TV). Journal when, what, and why you use each.

2) Create healthy boundaries/habits:

- No screens 1-2 hours after waking or before sleep. You could replace this with: a morning walk, stretching, or prayer/reflection, journaling, reading

- No phones during mealtimes, and especially when with other people

- Turn phone to grayscale to make it less addictive

- Commit to reading the “news” only once a week. Some people order the Sunday paper, which provides them with a weekly analog ritual to look forward to, and limits one’s information diet to a set number of pages.

- When consuming any information, ask yourself: Is this something that I can immediately use, or is it simply another trivial piece of information?

3) Declutter:

- Turn off all non-essential notifications

- Uninstall as many distracting apps as possible (or move them to a hidden folder)

4) New Practices

- Morning/evening walk

- Stretching/exercise

- Prayer/reflection

- Journaling (I encourage everyone to do this, if only during the detox period, as it will give you the opportunity to reflect on what you are experiencing

- Hiding/turning off phone when possible

- Intentional digital fasts: no technology for a day (a morning, an evening)

- Intentional analog hobbies (music, art, etc.)

- Intentional analog rituals: read a physical book, write with pen and paper, make tea/coffee slowly

5) Build Community

- Find others who share your concerns and desire to detox

- Intentional conversations/connections

6) Finally, here are two possible ways one might go about a technology detox:

- Cold Turkey: The best method is to plan an intentional tech-free vacation with friends or family. You can incorporate any of the above, but commit to simply going tech-free during your break.

- If this is not possible, the next best thing is to come up with something like a seven day detox plan incorporating the above practices (of course, there’s no reason that you couldn’t do both!)

Whatever your technology detox looks like, there can be no question that such intentional interventions on our part are necessary. We live in a technology saturated world with people who mostly do not live with boundaries, so the default is to do the same.

Ultimately, the goal of a technology and information detox is to get back to something resembling a “normal” approach to the world, so as to be in a better place to evaluate the influence that technology and information glut has over one’s life. As Postman realized forty years ago, we have been losing our capacity for clear thinking and evaluation for a very long time.

“And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 107-108)

Ok...that's it for today! As always, please share with a friend who you think might find this of interest...and join the conversation on my Substack page.

Have a great weekend...enjoy Neil Postman's excellent book...and reach out if you have any thoughts/questions you'd like to share! We'll be looking at Chapter Eight next week.

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!