If there is one quote to sum up Postman’s ideas in Amusing
Ourselves to Death, here it is: “Simple can be harder than complex. You have
to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple” (insert round of
applause for Steve Jobs quote). I’m not
saying that the ideas presented in “Amusing Ourselves to Death” are trivial but
they aren’t as complex or as confusing as they first seem. For me, it took a
while to comprehend a lot of what Postman was putting out in his book. However,
once I understood his ideas they instantly became so… simplistic. It’s actually
hard to believe that some of the thoughts he has have never occurred to me. For
example, his remarks in chapter two about truth. Postman writes of how truth is not
really truth. Postman's stance on truth is that truth is merely an idea accepted
widely by others and it being accepted depends on the medium of how it is
presented. The idea is not shocking or earth-shaking nor inconceivable so why
haven’t a lot of us thought of this before? I have to say that his frank notions
are part of what make this book interesting to me though. That petty much wraps
up my ideas on Postman’s ideas. I can’t wait to see what else Postman will make
me wonder about as I move forward in this novel!!
-Camille Burrus
I completely agree with you Camille that a lot of the subjects he talks about are not usually thought of in the way he mentions and I also found myself confused sometimes on the ideas he was trying to explain. His stance on different medias and there role in portraying the truth really stood out to me as I read the chapter. It was when I read his examples that people say "seeing is believing" instead of "saying is believing" or "reading is believing" that I was able to understand the idea of the different ways truth-telling can be told throughout different forms of media.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. I was confused during the first few chapters myself and was slowly giving up on the book all together. But once familiar phrases were formed and intriguing examples were made, I latched on to the book for dear life. It was hard with the language and what not, but it was worth the struggle.
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