It was by a not-so-happy providence that I was finishing Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” while hearing about Oprah Winfrey possibly running against Donald Trump in the next election in the next room. If you’ve read the book then you’ll realize just how fitting this pairing of events actually is.
This is not a new book. It was written in 1985. But, his insights on our culture today make him seem almost prescient. It is as if everything he said is coming true before our eyes.
Postman is primarily concerned with the way that technology teaches people in our culture. Print causes people to read and digest information. Television causes people to be entertained by short bits of disconnected information even in what is considered serious dialogue. This may sound strange at first until you consider how television and now our cell phones have changed the way that serious dialogue is done.
Instead of reading news stories, we receive 15-45 second news clips with entertaining pictures and videos in the background accompanied by appropriate music. Instead of serious and reasoned sermons, many people receive a pastor riding his Harley down the aisle or a guy preaching dressed as Batman. I think that Sesame Street has made the job of teachers harder because it has caused students to think that they have to be entertained and have fun while learning multiplication tables.
For A Bit Of Comparison
The strongest part of this book, in my opinion, was the comparison between Print America and Television America.
The age of print in America looked much different than the age of television. As Postman writes, there is a fundamental difference between a culture that is print oriented and one that is like ours. He writes,
In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be characterized by coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas. The public for whom it is intended is generally competent to manage such discourse. – Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 2005, p. 51
Postman argues that the intellectual nature of our Founding Fathers and the ability of people in that era to follow what they were thinking in public discourse is part of living in a print era. This continued in America for quite some time. One big example that he gives is the Lincoln v. Douglas debates, which would last 4 hours or more and people would come out to hear them talk. I can’t imagine attending a 4-hour debate, or even longer, today. I can’t imagine setting aside that kind of time. I can’t imagine having the ability to follow the concepts that they discussed because the content itself was complex.
This is much different than what we have today. Postman gives this commentary concerning the debates of 1984.
Prior to the 1984 presidential elections, two candidates confronted each other on television in what were called “debates.” These events were not in the least like the Lincoln-Douglas debates or anything else that goes by that name. Each candidate was given five minutes to address such questions as, What is (or would be) your policy in Central America? His opposite number was then given one minute for a rebuttal. In such circumstances, complexity, documentation and logic can play no role, and, indeed, on several occasions syntax itself was abandoned entirely. It is no matter. The men were less concerned with giving arguments than with “giving off” impressions, which is what television does best. Post-debate commentary largely avoided any evaluation of the candidates’ ideas, since there were none to evaluate. , Instead, the debates were conceived as boxing matches, the relevant question being, Who KO’d whom? The answer was determined by the “style” of the men–how they looed, fixed their gazee, smiled, and delivered one-liners.-Ibid p. 97
Now, what shocked me was that the Regan debates apparently were a lot like all the debates that have come after. Content really didn’t matter, what mattered was who looked like the better performer.
You’re probably noticing the stark contrast of this to the intellectual nature of elections of the past. Pre-television you were likely to know the content of the candidates’ platform while not knowing what they look like. Now we judge candidates by what they look like and how they defeat their opponent in the ring…errrrr podium. Sure, there were some snarky comments made toward the other side, but there was actually content debated. And the people listening had the desire and ability to follow the conversation.
Another example of this is the intellectual nature of religious discussion in the print era vs. the discussion today.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religious thought and institutions in America were dominated by an austere, learned, and intellectual form of discourse that is largely absent from religious life today. No clearer example of the difference between earlier and modern forms of public discourse can be found than in the contrast between the theological arguments of Jonathan Edwards and those of say, Jerry Falwell, or Billy Graham, or Oral Roberts. The formidable content to Edwards’ theology must inevitably engage the intellect; if there is such a content to the theology of the television evangelicals, they have not yet made it known. – Ibid p. 56
In other words, the serious religious discourse of the past has changed form to be more like the entertainment that everyone desires to get as they watch TV or scroll through Social Media. I have read some of Edwards’ books and other people of that era. It is absolutely like Postman argues here. Sometimes I have to read Edwards a paragraph 3 or 4 times to completely understand what he is saying. I’m not sure if this is me acclimating myself to a more intellectual era or just forcing myself to digest that much content, but it is definitely different than today’s discourse.
What’s the Point?
Americans have demanded to be entertained. This demand has spilled over into what is supposed to be serious dialogue: the news, education, religious discourse, political discourse among other serious dialogues is more about entertainment now than it is about the seriously conveying ideas.
And here is the point that I am wanting to make. We have been shaped by our technology more than we understand. We loved being entertained so much that we left behind the discourse that actually made America great. The possibility of a Trump-Winfrey election would have been laughable in the early days of the American Experiment. And the reason that it is a possibility right now is that we have traded our early intellectual days for entertainment posing as intellectual discourse.
Maybe it is our fault that the serious thinkers don’t work in Washington anymore. Maybe their discourse was not something that we wanted to listen to or really cared about. Their reasoned talk, books, papers, journals, and articles were not really something we wanted. So, now our leaders are here to entertain us. And so, we could get the leaders that we’ve really always wanted: A reality tv star and talk tv star.
R. Dwain Minor
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