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A review by kochella
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
5.0
As I sit down to write this, President Trump has just described Frederick Douglass as "someone who has done a terrific job that is being recognized by more and more people." (February 1, 2017).
Frederick Douglass was an African American abolitionist, writer, and reformer who died in 1895. Apparently, the President of the United States has no idea who Frederick Douglass was, since he is referring to Douglass in the present tense.
I have been struggling to understand how Trump got elected. Not just because I disagree with his political views, but because he is, quite frankly, woefully uneducated. Not only is he woefully uneducated, but he apparently also has no desire to educate himself now that he is President - not even with intelligence briefings.
What happened? How has this country gone from Founding Fathers who were intellectual giants - including Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison - to someone who literally cannot be bothered to read a book? And why, exactly, does so much of this country find this to be a perfectly acceptable state of affairs?
Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" offers a deeply compelling thesis as to how and why America has slouched so pitifully towards ignorance. As he puts it, "We might even say that America was founded by intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a communications revolution to recover."
Postman argues that in the early America of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the printed word had a monopoly on discourse, attention, and intellect because that was all people had. Most Americans never even laid eyes on their leaders - they knew them only by their printed words. That is to say, Americans only knew their leaders by their public positions, their arguments, and their knowledge as codified by the printed word.
Today we don't know our leaders by their words so much as by their faces - thanks to the modern monopoly of visual media - the television and internet. In early America, participation in public life required the capacity to negotiate the printed word and mature citizenship was not conceivable without sophisticated literacy. Now? Who cares. As long as you look good on TV and can speak in easy-to-understand 30 second sound bites, you're good. In fact, Postman writes, modern public discourse does not (and really cannot) appeal to the public's reason as it did in early America, because the disjointed nature of television does not allow for such a sustained level of discussion. Can you imagine a modern American cheerfully listening to a presidential debate for between 5 to 7 hours (as they did in Lincoln's time)? Can you imagine them doing it in person, without pictures of any kind?
Visual media has transformed us from a typographical and deeply literate society to one in which we are dazzled by a constant stream of flashing pictures and music that instructs us how to feel. There needn't be much coherence in this visual world because we are endlessly entertained by it and it is so adept at eliciting our emotions. Visual media has such a monopoly in modern America that many Americans don't end up voting for leaders whose knowledge and reasoning appeal to them, but for those who make them feel a certain way.
This book was written in 1985, so obviously it didn't discuss the most recent U.S. presidential election. Its theories, however, were easily extended. It explained (to me, at least) why so many Trump voters cannot articulate the political philosophies that convinced them to vote for him, but rather they point out how he made them feel. Trump never even fully articulated any of his political philosophies during the campaign. But people had seen him be "a successful business man" on a reality TV show in which he hired and fired people (even celebrities!), he obviously has lots of money, and his stump speeches appealed to their feelings of dissatisfaction with how the world had treated them - so they felt he must be a good leader who understood them. Many of Trump's voters also "didn't trust Hillary," although I rarely heard it explained why. The explanations I did hear almost always had less to do with her political philosophies, and everything to do with their feelings about her. A far cry from the intellectual discourse of eighteenth and nineteenth century America.
This was one of the most fascinating and illuminating books I have read in years. I believe it gave me an understanding of current events that I desperately wanted and needed.
Five massive stars.
An all-time favorite.
Most highly recommended.
Frederick Douglass was an African American abolitionist, writer, and reformer who died in 1895. Apparently, the President of the United States has no idea who Frederick Douglass was, since he is referring to Douglass in the present tense.
I have been struggling to understand how Trump got elected. Not just because I disagree with his political views, but because he is, quite frankly, woefully uneducated. Not only is he woefully uneducated, but he apparently also has no desire to educate himself now that he is President - not even with intelligence briefings.
What happened? How has this country gone from Founding Fathers who were intellectual giants - including Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison - to someone who literally cannot be bothered to read a book? And why, exactly, does so much of this country find this to be a perfectly acceptable state of affairs?
Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" offers a deeply compelling thesis as to how and why America has slouched so pitifully towards ignorance. As he puts it, "We might even say that America was founded by intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a communications revolution to recover."
Postman argues that in the early America of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the printed word had a monopoly on discourse, attention, and intellect because that was all people had. Most Americans never even laid eyes on their leaders - they knew them only by their printed words. That is to say, Americans only knew their leaders by their public positions, their arguments, and their knowledge as codified by the printed word.
Today we don't know our leaders by their words so much as by their faces - thanks to the modern monopoly of visual media - the television and internet. In early America, participation in public life required the capacity to negotiate the printed word and mature citizenship was not conceivable without sophisticated literacy. Now? Who cares. As long as you look good on TV and can speak in easy-to-understand 30 second sound bites, you're good. In fact, Postman writes, modern public discourse does not (and really cannot) appeal to the public's reason as it did in early America, because the disjointed nature of television does not allow for such a sustained level of discussion. Can you imagine a modern American cheerfully listening to a presidential debate for between 5 to 7 hours (as they did in Lincoln's time)? Can you imagine them doing it in person, without pictures of any kind?
Visual media has transformed us from a typographical and deeply literate society to one in which we are dazzled by a constant stream of flashing pictures and music that instructs us how to feel. There needn't be much coherence in this visual world because we are endlessly entertained by it and it is so adept at eliciting our emotions. Visual media has such a monopoly in modern America that many Americans don't end up voting for leaders whose knowledge and reasoning appeal to them, but for those who make them feel a certain way.
This book was written in 1985, so obviously it didn't discuss the most recent U.S. presidential election. Its theories, however, were easily extended. It explained (to me, at least) why so many Trump voters cannot articulate the political philosophies that convinced them to vote for him, but rather they point out how he made them feel. Trump never even fully articulated any of his political philosophies during the campaign. But people had seen him be "a successful business man" on a reality TV show in which he hired and fired people (even celebrities!), he obviously has lots of money, and his stump speeches appealed to their feelings of dissatisfaction with how the world had treated them - so they felt he must be a good leader who understood them. Many of Trump's voters also "didn't trust Hillary," although I rarely heard it explained why. The explanations I did hear almost always had less to do with her political philosophies, and everything to do with their feelings about her. A far cry from the intellectual discourse of eighteenth and nineteenth century America.
This was one of the most fascinating and illuminating books I have read in years. I believe it gave me an understanding of current events that I desperately wanted and needed.
Five massive stars.
An all-time favorite.
Most highly recommended.