Amusing Ourselves to Death

I love reading.  In middle school, I was often “caught” reading a book when I should’ve been doing schoolwork.  Reading and eating marshmallows were probably the two most common reasons that I got in trouble (somehow my sweet tooth and the only-eating-healthy-snacks-between-meals family rule didn’t seem to get along).  I still have quite the sweet tooth, though dark chocolate seems to be its preferred mode of expression these days, and I’ve also retained an insatiable appetite for reading.

Recently, I read a book about reading.  (Yeah, you might want to re-read that sentence.)

More specifically, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business describes the cultural shift from typography to show business.  Typography refers to a print-based culture; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that described the United States.  This was an era in which political debates were untelevised and easily lasted six or seven hours, usually with a break for everyone to go home and eat dinner.  Postman argues that we have become an age of show business, an era of entertainment.  This is an era in which greater and greater stimulation has become required to avoid boredom.  In fact, boredom itself is a recent phenomenon.

In a prophetic voice circa 1985 (pre-cell phones, social media, GPS, iPads, etc.), Postman critiques our new era of show business.  Unlike other critics, his objection to television (and other forms of media) is not one of content; the television certainly contains unwholesome material, but books can as well.  Instead, his critique is one of form.  Form affects what and how content can be addressed and what response is demanded of the partaker.  For example, 30-second commercials.  If you can reasonably convince me to buy your product in 30 seconds, why would I want it?

For the full story, consult the book. 

For a fascinating tangent, the following is Postman's definition of intelligence within a print-based culture.  That is, what an “intelligent” reader is doing as (s)he reads:

“Although the general character of print-intelligence would be known to anyone who would be reading this book, you may arrive at a reasonably detailed definition of it by simply considering what is demanded of you as you read this book.  You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time.  If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency.  The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our minds.  Controlling your body is, however, only a minimal requirement.  You must also have learned to pay no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page.  You must see through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings of the words they form.  If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be thought stupid.  If you have learned how to get to meanings without aesthetic distraction, you are required to assume an attitude of detachment and objectivity.  This includes your bringing to the task what Bertrand Russell called an ‘immunity to eloquence,’ meaning that you are able to distinguish between the sensuous pleasure, or charm, or ingratiating tone (if such there be) of the words, and the logic of their argument.  But at the same time, you must be able to tell from the tone of the language what is the author’s attitude toward the subject and toward the reader.  You must, in other words, know the difference between a joke and an argument.  And in judging the quality of an argument, you must be able to do several things at once, including delaying a verdict until the entire argument is finished, holding in mind questions until you have determined where, when or if the text answers them, and bringing to bear on the text all of your relevant experience as a counterargument to what is being proposed.  You must also be able to withhold those parts of your knowledge and experience which, in fact, do not have a bearing on the argument.  And in preparing yourself to do all of this, you must have divested yourself of the belief that words are magical and, above all, have learned to negotiate the world of abstractions, for there are very few phrases and sentences in this book that would require you to call forth concrete images.  In print-culture, we are apt to say of people who are not intelligent that we must ‘draw them pictures’ so that they may understand.  Intelligence implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of concepts and generalizations....To be able to do all of these things, and more, constitutes a primary definition of intelligence in a culture whose notions of truth are organized around the printed culture.” (25-26)

I love this book.  Read it.  It will change the way you understand our society.