Amusing Ourselves to Death

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – George Orwell, 1984

Neil Postman first floated into my consciousness in the 70s. His 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, was a seminal critique of television and similar distractions and their alarming place of their increasing influence in society.

Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell’s work, 1984, where they were oppressed by state violence.

Postman’s theory was that the frivolity and ubiquitousness of “entertainment,” as so easily available and consumed on television, would ultimately diminish society in countless ways. Television, Postman argued, denuded thinking, originality, innovation and creativity in individuals.

Below Postman comments on two iconic works of the twentieth century. Both 1984 and Brave New World focus on the gradual dehumanization of society, if by two very different modalities.

As articulated in Brave New World, distractions (or amusements) would create, ultimately, a lessening ability of the masses to focus and apply problem-solving skills to solving social problems.

1984 takes another tack and is a study in a society subjugated by powerful politicians who keep the electorate in check through fear and violence.

Postman predicted back in his 1985 book what the future could eventually look like if frivolous entertainments took precedence over intellectual development and character-building.

Welcome to our overarching modern day dilemma.

“Postman references George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World that was published in 1932.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

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.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

“In 1984“, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.”

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us.

Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. ~ Neil Postman

(Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death https://amzn.to/3OTfAfr)