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A review by cassiakarin
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman
4.0
Whenever I bring this book up to people who are "In the know" about anything, their first comment to me is, "Ah, a classic." I now can see why. For though this book was written in the 1980s, the foundational principles explained in its pages carry a weight of wisdom for all ages proceeding it. I was a tad distracted by the explicit references to current trends and affairs used in the book because of their datedness, but that did not deter my eagerness to hear out the still very relevant points. In fact, I marveled and chuckled at his own shock of the current mental capacities and societal declines compared to my own experience nearly forty years later. I longed to hear his opinion of today's society, and of social media rather than television news!
There were parts of the book that If found a bit difficult, a bit hardy in the best way, which was a needed challenge and a somewhat humbling as I put myself in the context of his criticisms regarding the growing lack of basic rationality and ability to reason through or articulate argumentation.
Overall, this was a needed book for my philosophical understanding of the world and helped me gain and better understanding of where our society and culture has come from, and more importantly, why it is where it is today.
There were parts of the book that If found a bit difficult, a bit hardy in the best way, which was a needed challenge and a somewhat humbling as I put myself in the context of his criticisms regarding the growing lack of basic rationality and ability to reason through or articulate argumentation.
Overall, this was a needed book for my philosophical understanding of the world and helped me gain and better understanding of where our society and culture has come from, and more importantly, why it is where it is today.