🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.”

~ Neil Postman

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Greetings, dear newsletter subscribers,

Today we're looking at Chapter Five, “The Peek-A-Boo World,” of Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. Prior to reading this chapter, did you realize what a world-shattering invention the telegraph was?

“After reading Chapter Five of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, I had to stare at the wall for awhile to absorb what I’d just read.”

~ A friend, on social media

This morning I followed a conversation on social media regarding a news event related to something that happened in the Middle East overnight. Someone I have come to admire was giving his opinion, with thoughtfulness, insight, and nuance on what had happened. I appreciated his words (as I usually do). As I re-read Chapter Five of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, however, it gave me cause for reflection on my earlier experience. Postman writes,

“How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve? For most of us…our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action. This fact is the principal legacy of the telegraph: By generating an abundance of irrelevant information, it dramatically altered what may be called the ‘information-action ratio.’ In both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its importance from the possibilities of action.”

~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 68

We have become so used to an information environment in which random people opining on random news events is considered “normal” that even pointing it out seems to be a vain endeavor. As Postman notes, however, this was not normal until the recent past. Today, most “news” items are irrelevant and incoherent, and even if they weren’t, we are usually impotent to actually do anything about them. How did this new reality come about? What are its effects, and what can we do about them?

Telegraphy

Postman points out that the technology that brought about this new reality was the invention of the telegraph. For the first time in human history, information could travel faster than the humans carrying the information:

“Samuel Finley Breese Morse, [was] America's first true ‘spaceman.’ His telegraph erased state lines, collapsed regions, and, by wrapping the continent in an information grid, created the possibility of a unified American discourse…

The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography's definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. The telegraph made information into a commodity, a ‘thing’ that could be bought and sold irrespective of its uses or meaning.”

~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 65

Chapter Five of Postman’s book is titled, “The Peek-a-Boo World,” which is the metaphor he uses for the kind of world that our modern information society creates:

“Together, this ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new world—a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child's game of peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also endlessly entertaining.”

~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 77

One of the goals here at Gadfly Academy is to attempt to answer the question of why humans feel so ill at ease in the modern world. If modern people are the wealthiest and most comfortable in human history, why is it that we suffer so much from stress and mental illness? Why is that so many feel as though there is something “off” about our world and the way that we live our life? At least one important factor must be that we live in what has been referred to as an “information society,” and that the glut of information that we are presented with daily is irrelevant and incoherent. Peek-a-boo can be an enjoyable game to play with a child for a certain amount of time, but living in a world where peek-a-boo is a way of life is highly disorienting and disconcerting, even if we are addicted to it.

It’s worth noting that the invention of the telegraph (and its electronic information transfer) was for the 19^th century (and the Typographic Age) what the invention of the Gutenberg press was to the 15^th century (and the Age of Orality). The telegraph and Gutenberg’s press were the critical inventions that brought about new epistemological eras.

Photography

The ascendancy of the image accompanied the ascendancy of the digital information society, although it wasn’t until the television, the personal computer, and especially the smartphone, that this unholy marriage came into full fruition. When combined with irrelevant, incoherent, and context-less “news,” the photograph give this “news” a vague sense of being “real,” even though both the “news” and the image remain context-less for the vast majority of those who encounter them. Postman addresses the particular problems of the epistemology of the image here (and elsewhere), but for now it’s enough to note that the eventual succession of the Typographic Age by the Visual Age was greatly aided by this unholy union.

“Television gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection. And it brought them into the home…To put it plainly, television is the command center of the new epistemology…Television has achieved the status of ‘meta-medium’ —an instrument that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of ways of knowing as well.”

~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 78-79

Television

Finally, the ascendancy of the television (and eventually of the personal computer and the smartphone) completed the process of toppling the reign of typography. As Postman explains, the visual image has become the reigning epistemological tool, and its handmaidens (television, the smartphone, etc.) have become its ubiquitous advocates.

“There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture's adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all but complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane.”

~ Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 79

So What?

It is difficult to assess the damage that has been done when our entire lives have been shaped by the damaged world in which we were raised, a world that seems “normal” to us. Is there really a problem with consuming irrelevant and incoherent news? One’s answer will depend on whether or not one wants to live a more coherent and relevant life. As I’ve mentioned before, it is difficult to believe that the constant consumption of irrelevant and incoherent news is unrelated to the meaning crisis and the mental health crisis that we are experiencing.

What to Do?

A metaphor I often turn to is that of a tree that has grown up at an angle. In order to “correct” the tree and to help it grow more straight, one can apply a certain amount of pressure so that slowly, over time, the tree might straighten out. Trying to make too much of an adjustment, too quickly, will usually result in the tree breaking from the pressure. It is good to take regular account of what information one consumes, and to reflect on how this information affects one positively or negatively. Reflecting on one’s day by journaling can help in this endeavor. Different people have different tolerance for stress, but all of us are affected by the irrelevant information that floods into our lives daily. Making a conscious decision to slow down this flood is within the grasp of all of us. Perhaps this will mean using a flip phone instead of a smartphone, or deleting apps so that your smartphone only has limited functionality. As always, it’s important to remember that we do have agency and that every day we either make conscious decisions to shape our lives, or we unconsciously allow the world around us to dictate how we live.

Ok...that's it for today! As I've mentioned before, please join the conversation on my Substack page.

Have a great week/end...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 Six 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!