Amusing Ourselves to Death (2009)
web.archive.org
web.archive.org
In the book, Postman analyzes how media affects humans and society. He basically gives a framework for predicting and understanding the effects of different types of media. The book was written before social media, so the examples are books, newspapers, tv, radio, etc. But so much of social media seems obvious once you read his analysis.
Every time I see the typical discussion (person A: social media makes people dumb; person B: Plato said books make people dumb) I think that the discussion could use some Postman - not all media affects us in the same way - some media encourages behaviors that are good for society, and some media encourages behaviors that are bad for society.
I think media simply mostly brings out the behaviors already inherent to people. If a shitty person sees their behavior validated in media, they are now more likely to act it out in real life. Likewise for good behaviors.
Some people are definitely more susceptible to such influence than others.
So if some behaviors are amplified more than other, isn't that equivalent to considering that a medium induces more frequently a certain behavior?
The other strange part of video media is that intimate parasocial relationships it builds.
I believe living in an environment that favors short attention spans were usually dangerous. Monitoring constant change is what one does when they are alert.
I see the real issue is the duration of the reward cycle without building to a larger idea.
Maybe I should have specified that I meant the characters in a book, I thought that would be clear from the context.
When I was young, it was a rare thrill to interact with my idols. To accost them for a signature after a concert. To send fan mail and receive a personal postcard in return. Once, there was a surrealist late-night host who I met by chance at a Burger King with my mother. He was subsequently arrested with charges of child endangerment!
So now we're on the Internet and it's so easy to become a fan, a patron, a supporter, of "stars" and "influencers" who are so niche that your money and attention make a difference, and they can return that attention with personal comments and reactions, or even commission works for you. In days of yore, it was the Church and State and wealthy aristocrats who commissioned art, and now I could fund a KickStarter or Patreon for next to nothing. You've got private/semiprivate livestreams where they just read your comments and react. And we remain perfect strangers.
Thankfully, there are ways to stay connected to the community and maintain healthy relationships too. Since before the pandemic, I've "gone to church" on YouTube and I do see familiar names in the live-chat. You can attend city council meetings and other real stuff of local interest. Your support group can stay connected via Zoom.
But these pernicious ideas that a celebrity is your best friend, that your attraction to a woman will be requited or reciprocated, that a personal connection has been made, that's dangerous and a growing threat to our collective safety and sanity.
You can really get deep into characters' heads, their motivations, etc. The more I read the more I feel like it makes me a better person as I absorb empathy and deep insights about consciousness and the human experience.
The things people read when they read a lot were not deep masterpieces. They were, basically, shovelware in book form.
I like to read a mix of new material from good up and coming authors and classics on my backlog.
(I don't know what the redeeming argument for TikTok would be...)
Little bits of entertainment — music, poetry, jokes/clowning, gossip, show and tell on all kinds of topics, musings about life and interpersonal relationships, practitioners demonstrating their craft.
It presents an interesting cross-section of news that's hard to get anywhere else. It's not great or even good at the normal news format but you can read about a riot and that the mayor called in the national guard in the paper, but the video of someone on their porch getting screamed at and having warning shots fired at them for not going indoors has an impact.
HN discussion from 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1554733
Wikipedia entry for the book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
> the Australian references
These are unknown to most Americans.
Edit: err never mind, now I see why you included the archive link. Switched to that.
_Animal Farm_ was taught to me by my capitalist and authoritarian teachers as an anti-communist screed. The problem with the farm is that the pigs end up being capitalists, though I have never seen or heard of the text being taught to children as an anti-capitalist text.
This culture does a very good job of assuming that the field of possibilities can easily and quickly be reduced to two choices and, further, that we're forced to choose between the two and, finally, that anyone who thinks there are additional possible choices is "being childish and unrealistic".
I find the US to be highly authoritarian, full of easy examples double-thought and duck speak.
I don't, however think folks are being manipulated: I think that the fundamental authoritarian move is that folks here have manipulated themselves. To me, that's close to the point of 1984. Or Mark Fisher's books, or Ursula Le Guin. I'm in the middle of Butler's _The Parable of the Sower_ and it's feeling like that self-deception is core to what is happening in that book as well:
folks reducing the world to some pretty horrible binaries and then becoming happily ensnared in the ensuing problems.
I’m curious to know where else you have lived (I assume you live in the US). As someone that has lived under an authoritarian regime, I find this statement really hard to agree with. The US is far from perfect but it is far from authoritarian in my opinion.
“These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. […] Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. […] But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?
[…] intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. […] I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.”
Yes. It's rare to find people online who understand this point of 1984, that everyone becomes big brother and that's how it (it being the oppressive system in place to keep people in check) sustains itself.
And then you find out:
Animal Farm (1954 UK animated film) was funded in part by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who also made changes to the original script.
As an outsider, occasionally I am surprised by the similarities between the USA and the USSR even if the precise details are very different.
Authoritarians are popular. The January 6th Capitol attack was perpetrated by people who wanted the state to exert itself violently, because they believed The State and The People were one and the same, and anyone who is a victim of The State was not truly part of The People to begin with.
The threat of Big Brother is not that he'll watch us, but that we will believe he is watching everyone else on our behalf. Police militarization and mass incarceration are already proof that Americans are willing to cede rights when they believe that only "outsiders" will suffer as a result.
Independent bookstores have been consistently growing since 2009: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpol...
The book industry is expanding with particularly strong growth in e-books and audiobooks: https://worldmetrics.org/book-industry-statistics/
Educational attainment is generally increasing as time goes on in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
Voter turnout has increased over time in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States...
If anything I think that the general population is becoming more aware and educated.
A more diversified leisure industry with more options than the days of having three channels on television is not the same as drowning in amusement, or the average person spending more time on amusement than on “serious” and “thoughtful” activities. Instead, it means that the individual has more options for forms of amusement they enjoy.
I tend to think even reading the worst trash book is still better than Video. But it is still playing into distraction.
Note: I Like Manga, but those series that are 100 volumes long, that is distracting.
Not necessarily.
Read Jacques Ellul's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Ellul) book "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_M... The wikipedia page has a good synopsis of all the major points. Read carefully his arguments specifically on "Information" and "Education" and how they actually make you more susceptible to Propaganda. Excerpt;
"Information" Is an essential element of propaganda, which must "have reference to political or economic reality" to be credible. In fact, no propaganda can work until the moment when a set of facts has become a problem in the eyes of those who constitute public opinion." Education permits the dissemination of propaganda in that it enables people to consume information. Information is indistinguishable from propaganda in that information is an essential element of propaganda because for propaganda to succeed it must have reference to political or economic reality. Propaganda grafts itself onto an already existing reality through "informed opinion". Where no informed opinion with regard to political or economic affairs propaganda cannot exist making it an indispensable aspect. Propaganda means nothing without preliminary information that provides the basis for propaganda, gives propaganda the means to operate, and generates the problems that propaganda exploits by pretending to offer solutions. It is through information that the individual is placed in a social context and learns to understand the reality of his own situation. Information allows us to evaluate our situation feel our own personal problems are a general social problem thus enabling propaganda to entice us into social and political action. Information is most effective when it is objective and broad because it creates a general picture. With information quantity is better than quality, the more political or economic facts believed to be mastered by an individual, the more sensitive their judgment is to propaganda. In fact, only in and through propaganda do the masses have access to political economy, politics, art, or literature. The more stereotypes in a culture, the easier it is to form public opinion, and the more an individual participates in that culture, the more susceptible he becomes to the manipulation of these symbols.
Now add to it all that we have discovered since then in Neuroscience/Neurobiology on how to bypass the "rational" side of the Brain and you will realize that we mostly have "Informed Opinions" and "General Confusion" rather than Real "Education" and "Awareness".
If anything, the latter has become far more difficult to achieve today.
A game of chess does not add a single new fact to the mind; it does not excite a single beautiful thought; nor does it serve a single purpose for polishing and improving the nobler faculties.
Scientific American, July, 1858
[0]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/19th-century-conce...
If you can be a champion at anything you deserve recognition - just look at the people lauded for chugging dozens of hot dogs
Exactly.
So take a game AI from Deep Mind, link it to some AI that can build a world model, categorize images, put it in a robot, maybe an LLM so it can talk to you, give it some goals. See what happens.
Life can look like a game, but to think it is nothing more betrays just how easy you have it.
All of which are very valuable life lessons.
And anyway, sports are vastly more complicated than chess is. Just simply dribbling a basketball while bipedal walking is beyond the capability of replication by robot at the current moment. But a home computer from 20 years ago would beat >90% of the world in chess.
Also, there being variance doesn't mean that there is randomness. There is no random element to the game of chess. All the variance comes from human decisions. It's an unsolved game, so there is no way to guarantee a win.
Define random in terms of sports, the same conditions apply to chess. The wind affecting trajectory of a ball could be similar to environmental factors effecting cognitive performance.
I wouldn't use the term "random" either. What randomness exists for baseball? Slight curve of a bat? Maybe that is part of the game and should be calculated into by the player and isn't randomness at all but part of the game. "Randomness" exists in almost every competitive activity, its called variance.
It's not even worth discussing, you don't even understand the terms you are using.
Less complicated than any sport that a computer can't be better at than humans.
By definition there are more moving variables in 99% of sports than chess. 5 on 5 basketball, at any time any player can be in an almost endless number of positions on the court in an almost endless number of contortions with different velocity and acceleration of multiple components of the body. The mental intelligence required to teach a robot how to walk and run is significantly harder of a problem than beating the best chess player in the world.
Chess isn't complicated. There is a finite number of moves a player can make at any one turn. And there is a finite number of unique possible games that can be played in chess, which means its solvable (not neccesaeily that it will be solved). You can notate an entire chess game on a napkin, you can't even fully quantify any sport with full length video footage. Comparing the vast complexity of physical movement to pieces on a board. Its a joke, you're a joke.
No idea how you are defining random. What random elements exist for cricket? The same things you would define as random for a sport would be the same for chess.
The sad part is I am better at chess than you are. And have a deeper understanding of the game. Unless you are CM rated or above, highly doubt it.
Note that this might also hold to some degree for computer programming.
In any case, a life spent solving crossword puzzles would almost certainly deliver more positive net effects to the "player" (and society at large) than a person spending a lifetime getting good at chess. It really is odd that chess is considered so refined, laudable, etc. We probably shouldn't put it on a pedestal any higher than where we place video games.
(In fact, video games might actually be better—and I'm not saying that as someone staring up from a batch of sour grapes and/or looking for an excuse to play video games; that's not how I spend my time.)
Why do we feel the need to prefer or not prefer what others do with their time? Isn’t that something that concerns only the person and their own life, which really shouldn’t concern us at all?
I think your point really highlights this ethical mindset that has become so prominent today, especially with the rise of the internet.
The world would have been a better place had he kept playing chess then.
>>If men learn [to read], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.<<
Plato, 400-300 BC
Basically, learning to read and write would lead to an overreliance and provide only a "semblance of wisdom", rather than "true wisdom".
"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life."
170 years ago, people may have thought chess was superficial. I think now, maybe it would be considered a more noble pursuit.
Or, maybe the OP was saying it’s a constant devolving towards the increasingly trivial.
Not that I care. People can pursue whatever they want superficially. And I have plenty of my own superficial pursuits.
Talking about a dystopian future is a convenient way to assuade our sense of dissonance that the present is most certainly not that.
Case in point, nobody wants to rid the Earth of insects, fill the oceans with plastic or plough microplastics into every orifice, but we are all complicit and can't seem to gather ourselves to fix it.
Or for governments, doing government jobs that produce absolutely nothing of value and force people to waste a big chunk of their lives on administrative tasks...
I don't fear government, I fear the lack of it.
I think there is a role for public organisation, with political groups being one type. I am, however, critical of the prevailing agenda, since they often exist in a system where money can play a big role in deciding which priorities rise to the top.
I am not sure that politics plays such a central role as it used or as many people assume. Our society today seems to be divided functionally... we answer to many bosses, some economic, some political, some technological, and so on.
For me the more/less gov't debate misses the important points. It is the incentives, mechanism and processes that determine their value. I think you are referring to maintain order and keeping the peace - valuable functions, but made more necessary when people are under such strain in their daily lives.
Whats the public vs private split to this idea? Its not a new idea -
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” — John Wanamaker
> In the course of her job, Resaint had met people like Megrimson, executives who went into work and sat down at their desks and made decisions that ravaged the world. They didn't seem evil to her. They seemed more like fungal colonies or AI subroutines, mechanical components of a self-perpetuating super-organism, with no real subjectivity of their own. That said, she would have happily watched any of them die. - Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
I know it's still science/climate fiction, but very relevant to your point.
I think while humanity is destroying things they are fixing things as well. Banning of heavy metals in environment, removing asbestos, getting most people to stop smoking, eating less meat, energy transition... it's not perfect but we are working on it. Meanwhile average age increases and violence decreases (averaged over a large period at least)
However, in certain situations a society's path becomes so misdirected that its better to be alone than follow the group.
But it is distracting. Huxley didn't necessarily say everything was fun, just that it is distracting.
Rage, anger, outrage, keeps people engaged more than amusing.
So many things changed since he died but his ideas hold up pretty good.
Amusing Ourselves, on the other hand, was brilliant when I first read it, but now we seem to be living in a world that is both Orwell and Huxley. The free market provides endless pap, AND governments/political figures have learned to use new media to provide endless misinformation designed to keep us fearful. So maybe if I read it today it would not seem as relevant.
I felt terribly sorry for that loss of GDP and decline in mean global IQ.
Coincidentally I’ve been listening to Divers a bunch recently (which is a really great album, although I am just passively consuming just like everything else… I don’t know if it falls under formulaic for you, but it is a good formula if so). A lot of it is about death and time, and she ends one of the songs with a sort of gentle sing-songy “Look, and despair.” I always read the “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” in Ozymandias as a giant “fuck your hopes and achievements” from that ancient king.
Anyway, Joanna Newsom’s delivery is a lot more gentle, so maybe the fact that all of our effects and achievements will ground to dust is not so bad. Mattering would be very stressful.
1984's surveillance may be here, but the brute force is only reserved for the rare nails sticking out; if those haven't already gone crazy from surviving in the sane asylum.
For instance, the masses are kept at bay by scaring them with perpetual wars on the one hand and by keeping them distracted with machine-generation filthy "literature" (we only reached the level of technical sophistication to do that courtesy GPT/Llama last year). That part is more similar to what the post portrays as the "Huxley" view, perhaps.
The appendix of 1984 ("Newspeak") is a masterpiece on its own, redefining English words like "freedom" so that they can only mean "free from lice", with the notion of freedom forgotten.
Sources that are not in the prescribed 'news cycle' like AntiWar.com, FEE, The Institute For Justice, MintPressNews are not on the self-licking-icecream-cone list.
Aldous Huxley to George Orwell: My Hellish Vision of the Future is Better Than Yours (1949) - https://www.openculture.com/2018/08/aldous-huxley-george-orw...
The book talks a lot about Marshall McLuhan's quote "the medium is the message" and about how discourse has turned more and more into entertainment. Nixon lost to Kennedy because he was more attractive on television, and people are judged by how they look or behave as opposed to what they say.
More than anything, this book really made me appreciate written discourse.
It’s easy to see social media as harmless, and maybe it is, but it also has the potential to act as a powerful tool for serving propaganda and brainwashing.
I’m not suggesting an actual conspiracy theory here but it’s concerning that a few huge companies have the power to broadcast (and control) the flow of information to a majority of population, who will consume that information by and large without suspicion.
If for some reason Facebook or TikTok really wanted to meaningfully shift public opinion, they probably could, and in any direction they might choose.
There wasn't a time "before we had technology". Best to avoid that line of thinking if you want to escape the determinist (Veblem) trap and end up like Kaczynski.
Postman is an author we enjoy but seldom acknowledge the wider genre into which he fits. It's called "tech critique".
You can study it through the ages, comparing the outlooks and influences of Einstein, Ellul, Freud, Fromm, Heidegger, Illich, Kaczynski, Marcuse, Mumford, Nietzsche, and Postman, as well as sci-fi writers like Wells, Forster, Clarke, Gibson, Le Guin, Dick...It makes a very good companion to a study of the philosophy of science.
Some takeaways (at least ones that stick in my mind):
Technology is inseparable from the human condition, There are no primitivist escapes, noble savages or gardens of Walden.
By the same token there is not and won't ever be any golden age of Utopian technology.
Technology most closely resembles a "drug" in all its manifest functions.
Technology comes with an accumulative maintenance cost.
It is monotonic/directional. There's no easy way back and we can't uninvent stuff.
Minimising the _harms_ of technology while maximising the benefits and maintaining human dignity amidst it is the best we can do.
Even if initially excited by new developments all people are ultimately ambivalent about technology. They fear it, use it begrudgingly and resent their dependency on it. Iron bridges and steam locomotives raised the same questions as GPS and iPhones do today.
Many people romanticise and worship technology. It is a secular God.
If we "love" it, it's the sick love of an addict or the sadomasochistic power glee (tech "dealers" like Ellison, Zuck, and Musk)
A tiny few (that's us) enjoy a curious fascination that makes tech an "end in itself". Those people get used to create a supply for the dealers and addicts.
Anyway you gotta love Postman, if only for exquisite use of "centrifugal bumblepuppy". What he describes in this passage is really the soporific control/domination effects of technology in the hands of tyrants/dealers who delight in the subjugation of attention - which I think is made best by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
Well, this was nothing if not besides the point. Anyone on this site should recognize that when people like the person you responded to use the word "technology", especially in this context, it is typically a colloquialism for information technology, as in television, computers, phones and the like.
Even in colloquial English amongst the public, "technology" hasn't referred to technology in general for several decades, but simply to "information technology". It has become so common that the general public refers to the entire information technology industry simply as "tech" or the "tech industry", which excludes all traditional engineering disciplines outside of electrical, despite all those disciplines working with technology.
Besides, the most "effective" influencer does next to nothing because they were going to do that sort of thing already. There is a reason you see music stars doing promotionals for pleasurable to consume caloried drinks as a use for personal funds and not say deferred gratification products like investment banking.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220818-the-surprisingl...
panem et circenses
It refers to a concept prevalent in ancient Rome, where the government would provide its citizens with free food and entertainment in the form of lavish spectacles, such as gladiator fights, chariot races, and theatrical performances. The phrase highlights the strategy employed by the ruling class to keep the population content and distracted from important political issues and matters of governance.
Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects … that the stupified peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures, … learned subservience as naively, bit not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.Of relevance to this thread is his classic work "The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Voluntary_Servitu... and https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kurz-the-discourse-of-vol...
One very interesting note here is that this was one of the inspirations for Mahatma Gandhi in coming up with his idea of "Satyagraha" movement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha) in his struggle against British Colonialism in India - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gene-sharp-gandhi-on...
Most of us will read this and continue living our life exactly the same way as before
…wake upMetacognition, for all its benefits, comes with the newfound sisyphean task of being unable to intentionally avoid thinking about a white elephant for an entire minute. "Don't be influenced by the ads/media/propaganda" works about as well.
So perhaps the best way to reduce manipulation is to find a way back to sleep sometimes. A sort of meta-meta-cognition, if you will. It's self-awareness all the way down.
>If you're reading this, you've been in a coma for almost 20 years because of a car accident. We're trying a new technique. We don't know where this message will end up in your dream, but we hope we're getting through. Please wake up.
Was there any follow up, I didn't see one on the wiki.
It seems like we are accelerating to this.
Even the changes between 2005 and 2024. Near 20 years, we've leaned into the Huxley vision. Really leaned into it.
This is all getting really scary. I feel like we should do something. We should really band together and change course. I volunteer to go out and do something, except of course, I'm a bit distracted at the moment, so maybe can we put off the change for another week? I really need to see the end of this season of "Industry". Then we can do something, I'm sure I'll have some free time next week to get right on this.
It was re-issued in 2005. For 20th anniversary.
So nearly 40 years.
It's been so long I've forgotten some of the details.
Though, to my surprise, I remember while reading Brave New World, finding myself agreeing with a lot of the practices of that society.
A gram of soma, less aversion / denial of death, more liberal sexual norms.
Quote from Postman according to wikipedia[0]:
"the level of sensibility required to appreciate the music of Roger Waters is both different and lower than what is required to appreciate, let us say, a Chopin étude."
Ouch.
I actually got the album when it came out, and was roughly aware of the concept and the book from reviews in the music press. Had I known that it was comparing Orwell and Huxley I'd have definitely made the effort to read more. But this was before the internet so it wasn't easy (you had to do things like going to a public library), so technological progress is not all downside.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
Sometimes I wake up with a thread racing through my mind and the perfect retort to my "adversary"
I honestly don't hate you guys, but you give my life purpose and meaning... So thank you
> dated ... commentary on the evils of tv (zetsurin)
Hmm... I suppose both of these could be accurate.
They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
It's not what stupid people do in their free time - it's what capable and smart people value and pursue that makes all the difference.
Nietzsche laid this out quite beautifully in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Huxley and Orwell are kindergarten philosophy by comparison.
How do you know capable and smart people will keep having good values? Seems to me that it's true until it isn't - populism takes over politics, ideology takes over the humanities, science gets Goodharted to death, etc. Values are highly circular - we value what high-status people in our (sub)culture value, and you become high-status by getting what people value. This holds for smart people as well.
'Good' values don't exist, so we need not worry about that one :)
because i'd consider myself above average in terms of intelligence and ambition but i still fall into the procrastination trap often. now you might say that this makes me in fact "stupid" per your defininition (or maybe arrogant as i overestimate myself) but i see this in other people as well.
i also would not say that being "productive" as in moving humanity ahead must be the KPI by which everyone is measured. you only have one life, you can spend it how you want, even if that is watching tiktoks 24/7.
I suspect that, the more one is cut off from a sense of collective purpose, the more one finds solace in activities that reinforce a sense of "alright" in place of true wellness.
Btw, I'm also a big procrastinator and I consider it a gift. Many wonderful things in my life have been helped by it. In this sense, I agree that there is something about an inner drive that should be listened and reacted to, but I am not sure that all activities are of equal value.
Are you talking about this comic (i.e. a few sentences from the book) or the whole book?
I read the book a few years back and it's entirely focused on culture as a whole and less about the individual choices. He's not making a point of "television makes you dumb" (or "dumb people watches television"), but rather he makes the distinction between an "oral"-, "press"- and "television"-based culture. He claims that it's bad when television becomes the main platform that a society centers its communication around.
He's also honest that there's probably far more junk (in absolute terms) in printing than in television: "Television is not old enough to have matched printing's output of junk." It's not about the amount of "junk" – it's about something more fundamental about the medium.
I found the book quite interesting and would highly recommend reading it!
> They'd be boozing (more than they already are) if there wasn't such variety of cheap and available entertainment, the author doesn't seem to realize?
That's an extremely pessimistic view of the world: Categorizing a set of human beings as "stupid" and saying that it doesn't matter how society is structured?
And "smart people" are also influenced by how our society is structured, no?
Or as Postman himself put it, "the medium is the metaphor". And he strongly disliked the metaphor TV was bringing to bear on the Western World.
And everyone should note this is the television of the 1980s. You still don't really have home recording, there are a limited number of channels, and the monoculture truly exists.
This is a good point as well! When reading it I was reflecting on how internet compares to 1980s television. Yes, it has much more dopamine-fueled content, but it's way less of a monoculture. It gives a lot of opportunity for people to seek out what they're interested in and there's hundreds (thousands?) of communities with very different set of thoughts.
The Internet definitely has changed this, and now we are back into a creation capable metaphor.
Sounds like I need this book added to my reading list. I've not been able to get through Brave New World, but I might give it another try also.
However; Orwell had a better insight on the overall issues which can be found in his essays eg. "Notes on Nationalism", "All Art is Propaganda", "Politics and the English Language" (eg. Newspeak) etc.
Both cases assume that individuals are being coerced out of their potential to transform the world for the better, whether by Big Brother or by TikTok. In my view, both stem from an assumption that I don’t see playing out in the real world: that all individuals have the desire or capacity to make a difference and be something "more".
I think this idea came from the Enlightenment. That’s when we started to forget that, unfortunately, the overwhelming majority are just here to occupy space.
1984 looked scary, but BNW was hopeless. It exerced a much better control. The world of 1984 collapsed down itself.
Brave New World features islands which are limited domains in which free-thinking is both permitted and encouraged, as Mustapha Mond explains to Bernard and Helmholtz late in the novel. In part these serve as centres of creativity which the World State needs.
Island is a paradise world which largely stands, as you note, as a counterpart to BNW. Though all does not go well.
Here and now boys! Here and now ...
Sometimes I think that's all we all want: to find a community of like-minded people we can live among.
Information is exploding and global available Attention doesn't grow. People who pay attention to one thing, can't use the same time to pay attention to something else.
So govts and corps fight over this common pool of Attention using the Media (TV/Movies/Radio/Social/News/Sports/Gaming etc etc), just like they fought over land and oil and other natural resources. Media is literally used like front line troops of colonial empires in Attention capture wars.
But no one wins as long as Global Human Attention isn't given purpose. We await someone or some group to articulate that vision. Until then people working in Attention Capture fields will keep amusing us to death.
Ironically, we are discovering the human condition by evaluating what we are “not”.
… but, we are.
We tried out the grand visions to improve the human condition with one great push in the 20th century- didn’t work out so well
Instead we need small incremental lasting change - thinking we can transform life within a generation without repercussions, that’s just silly
The problem is that "people working in Attention Capture fields" are the exact people who are winning, at least by the most common scoring mechanism of 'wealth'.
If I have learned one thing in life it is this: money is, at best, a necessary evil. A means to an end. Pursuing it as an end in itself is an indication that we have strayed from the path and forgotten what we were doing.
It’s easy to be jaded by those that obviously value it more than others’ well being.
But the mismatch of priorities is what is wrong, that doesn’t negate money’s positive practical value & impact.
Most people have a more multifaceted relationship with money than as a dehumanizing god or drug.
kids grow up and fight for a house in good school district :).
I feel like having kids is root of all evil. Ppl justify all sorts of things (like wars and bidding for houses) and say that they are doing those things for sake of their kids.
Quite a take there. Kids are also the source of all joy and happiness, depending on how you look at it.
But they are also the source of global warming, wars. On a personal level they a source of anxiety, continuous striving, jealousy and fear.
Anyway, I just took a job helping get more houses off gas and on heat pumps, which is aligned with my goal to be part of addressing climate change, but it is hard to get a house near work (in Amsterdam in this case) when not optimising for pay.
Hmmmz, kids can do that practically anywhere in NL (and have good schools). Except maybe in parts of the big cities.
Countryside is both cheaper, safer, and the air is healthier. But don't go too rural. Because then wolves will get your kids for breakfast.
I was mostly thinking of back when I was in California to be honest. Though recently when I had to decide between a four or five day work week the biggest factor was “will I be able to outbid other people who want the same house”
As far as schools, I’ve been underwhelmed. They have kids on tablets a lot, shove a tv in front of them for lunch, and have rapidly declining PISA scores.
I bet a lot of people have died regretting they didn't earn more.
Because there is nothing in the definition you give that remotely looks like the median job. Societies are not structured to maximize the number of jobs that fits this definition. If social structure happens to fit your Ikigai, congratulation you won the cosmic loto, enjoy.
But maybe it’s not a relevant point to show surprise on this point. Consider how much people in the rest of humanity will have to go through major existential stressful abhorrent challenges, geopolitical struggles, being effectively reduced to dull task slaves by whoever happen to be their lord of the day. How then to be surprised that at the end of their life they can think "work moments were so shitty, I wish I had spend more enjoyable ones like those I experienced while taking time with people I deeply sincerely love".
By the way, if you haven’t yet do that today, tell at least to at least three people around you how much you love them and care that they enjoy moment passed together. I promise you won’t regret it on your death bed. ;)
My experience has been that older people often have a different outlook on life than what people my age, including me, would predict. Part of that is experience, part is coming from a different time where the baseline for quality of life was lower, and I suspect part of it is rose-tinted glasses.
Negative attention will eventually have consequences. Either they grow deaf, run away, become enraged, etc.
I think of the millions of ads, singers, bullies, salesmen who've vied for my attention, and you wear down. You get sick of saying "no", pretending not to notice, brushing aside dialogs, feeling bad because you can't help.
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Laurie-Anderson/Language-I...
Most companies are still in it for the money, and attention is only a means to an end.
For the idiotic narcissist leaders that pop up every now and then, attention might be interesting by itself. But luckily for us, there's just very few of those. Most of our government bodies are comprised of people who actually mean to do good, and just a bit of attention to some important matters suffices.
One of the best things I've done for myself is to stop reading the news. You will not believe how this ignorance has led me to a calmer life, to the gasp and concern of my peers, wondering how am I able to cope, to exist, without knowing what happens "in the world?"
As you say, anyone has 1 unit of attention, and unlike many other things, it is fully in our control. The biggest lie modern generations have been told is that the more knowledge about things, the greater the happiness. That you need to know what happens half a world away from you, often in more detail than what happens at your doorstep.
What saddens me the most about the future generations is seeing how politicised they has become, politics the game of rich old people; the powers that be have figured out that if they turn what happens in the palace into entertainment, people are distracted and don't get into them silly ideas like trying to change things. These days politics is slapstick comedy for "grown ups", and it's sad to see it infect the younger generations now.
"I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day."
(I haven't managed to stop reading the news unfortunately...)
I understand, fully and deeply, why news and current events are important, but they are also a cancer. At least in the way that they are sold to us. I also get a sense that the negative effect that the news has our mental health is quite widespread around the world. As in, it is not unique to America or Britain or European countries, etc.
I think either global thinking or acting in youth is a prerequisite to arriving at the position you describe. I mean, is there a better explanation for mid-life crises?
attention usually takes the path of least effort.
We're all dying fast. Medical industry can't stop it either, they don't know how. Nobody does.
Yet nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
We already have artists, we don’t have a cure for what we’ve done to the climate. It’s frustrating.
I think that most people over a certain age are quite aware of their own mortality, and are looking to bring meaning to the time that they have.
I'll take millions of years instead of 75 thanks
> looking to bring meaning to the time that they have
Everybody says something like this in response to this kind of question about death/aging - or they go all religious on me talking about Jesus etc.
I'm like "what is 2 + 2" and half or more of the people go "I like cake"
I'm talking about the poignant reality that you, me, and everyone on this website will be gone in a matter of decades (or less).
Half or more believe that upon death they will be instantly transported to a GOLDEN CITY (unless you're bad, then you go to FIRE CITY!) forever. "Gold good... fire bad..." yeah totally not made up guys sounds real.
For everyone else it's MasterCard - distractions.
-Vocal Minority, Intellectual Minority, Minorities et al.
I am not labelling individuals here - but there are very many around the world fitting that description.
Whatever point you’re trying to make is also hilarious to watch. In democracy it does not matter what instincts were provoked to get the votes. Sometimes the person you didn’t like wins, and that’s part of the deal.
Hilariousness not fitting.
Whereas (contrary to some immediate interpretations of your formula), the position "candidates that appeal to the guts are disqualified from office" has strong grounds.
I will express it again, more flatly: we require that administrators be decent, and in many parts of the world there exist candidates in office that do not fit requirements for respect.
I cannot properly match the general idea implying the above with your "ain't" statement because it is not clear what you exactly meant; we can only say that "democracy" in the way you seem to present it is not a universal value and that the "win" you mention seems a very childish idea ("win" is a working system, not the chanceful temporary result of a confrontation as if of sporting teams).
And I will add another related point, also in light of the other poster: systems which just substantially resemble confrontations as if of sporting teams are gravely inadequate. (And there exists no "win" there.)
And I will add a further one to try and dissipate any misunderstanding: whether the administration in the territory I happen to be in is or is not the one which I could have judged as that I would have picked from the pool, that remains unsharable information, but it is also irrelevant: inadequate administrators are a transversal presence.
Translation: "My guy didn't win so I'm bitching."
-- Stating «My guy didn't win» implies there would have been a sought candidate which lost in a competition: that is delirious. We may not even be aware of who political opponents were: there is no "«My guy»".
-- And there can be no confusion of "indecent" with "disliked": scum is scum and there cannot be attempts to cover objective faults with personal taste.
-- The statement (reconstructed) "the losing part rejects the system" is irrelevant: the system is rejected when faulty, regardless of side taking, which may not happen at all.
-- It's not that there "ain't no democracy": it is that "ain't no society", in face of division where scum can be confused for normal candidates. For your information, we had seen societies in which an attempt was made to restrict candidacy to presentable figures - in my lifetime.
You cannot take a picture and make of it a kindergarten sketch depicting something different.
Your efforts to exclude candidates along your arbitrary lines and complaining when you don't get your way is a perfect example of "It ain't democracy if you ain't won."
So: in Countria candidate C is elected for some office, competing with other candidates A, B, D and E. Who is «your guy»?
> arbitrary lines
There exist traits which are not arbitrary at all but evident as objectively lowly to some segments of the population. "Pornology" is one of them. Relativism towards those judgements is like fighting arithmetics. Whether candidate "P" were considered interesting by some for other reasons (Heidegger according to Jaspers: "But H. has beautiful hands!"), candidate P remains "scum". Said segment of the population will state being extremely uncomfortable with a society that allows "scum" taking office. The issue will be societal and systemic, and unrelated to competition.
> complaining when you don't get your way is a perfect example of "It ain't democracy if you ain't won."
Only if you remain in the narrow thought box of assumptions of acceptance of that concept of "democracy", as it appears from some uncertain interpretation of a locution hardly manageable in analytical terms. The expression contains a very loose idea of "won" that seems to imply you support some candidate, actively. And it contains an idea of "democracy" which suggests more than the term can clearly contain (as in, "then there is no democracy!" - ok, "so what", and what would that mean?).
If everyone was rational and didn't do what they were told, choosing to verify everything and only follow what was appropriate, then the entire marketing, ad, government, legal, prison, etc industries would all collapse because they wouldn't be necessary any more. It's fairly obvious that there are people who follow dangerous, stupid advice.
Entertainers are not necessarily these things.
Just like lawyers - presidents are often lawyers - are not necessarily brilliant paragons.
Those slave-owners held it self-evident that all men had the unalienable right of liberty (among other rights.)
I can't remember 1984 well enough to remember any specific examples of doublethink, but they can't be as good as this one.
Sorry. Who among the founding fathers was women to call it parents? Founding fathers seems to be more accurate than founder Mothers or Founding parents.