Postman’s Huxleyan Warning
In Neil Postman’s (2005)
final chapter of Amusing Ourselves to
Death, he proposed that our culture could best be described by the Huxleyan
theory- that “culture (has) become a burlesque.” Essentially, his argument was that public discourse
had become diluted by factors of entertainment and technology, which was grossly
augmented by television consumption.
Furthermore, Postman urged that we must not fail to recognize that we
cannot just make the “problem” go away.
Instead, we must embrace the fact that we have two choices for
addressing this matter:
- First, we could turn television programming into a mockery so that people would recognize the foolishness of their unending devotion to its flashy content. (However, Postman quickly acknowledged that this idea would never work, because to create and relay the actual parodies, we would have to use the very medium that we would be trying to mock); or
- Alternately, we could utilize the education system as a means to teach reform of the way we approach television watching, or to teach correct/responsible media consumption from the start for younger students (Postman, 2005).
I believe that Postman
demonstrated an eerie prescience in his predictions surrounding the diminishment
of our critical thinking abilities, our disregard of relevance, and the lack of
our effectiveness in communicating ideas.
Throughout the last three decades, these declines appear to be inversely
correlated to the increases in our usage of technology. I also think Postman’s idea to use the school
system to re-educate the population regarding responsible media use could be
effective- just not in America. As
seen in Terms and Conditions May Apply, the
Japanese currently incorporate lessons about responsible internet usage in
their curriculum, but as Postman noted, “(American" schools have not yet even got
around to examining the role of the printed word in shaping our culture" (Postman, 2005, p. 162). Plus, there tends to be a habit in American
society of twisting our educational means and lessons to meet our current needs
and views.
As someone who is extremely leery of media content,
and as a result, is very conscientious regarding its use, I am very pessimistic
when considering that there’s any hope that Americans will return to the days
when critical thinking, thought-provoking rhetoric, or the willingness to
challenge others was part of our standard discourse- even though the waning of
these concepts was already prevalent when I came upon the Earth in the 1970s. At this point, I believe “there’s no going
back.” I think that gathering
face-to-face and holding lengthy and informed conversations will soon be a “kitchy”
thing that old people, odd people, hipsters, and die-hard scholars will do to
pass the time.
Reference
Hoback, C. (2013).
Terms and Conditions May Apply. Retrieved from:
Postman, N. (2005).
Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business.
New York, NY: The Penguin Group
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