Hello, I am writing today to discuss part one of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves
to Death. So far, this has been
difficult to read and follow along, however it is extremely interesting and has
opened my eyes to things I had not yet thought of. Postman gets to his points quickly and uses
examples familiar to me which makes it far more engaging. He starts off by introducing the many forms
of public discourse, or the way our society communicates through; which are
print, speech, and the media. Right at
the beginning, Postman claims American television is not used to inform us but
instead entertain us with irrelevant information and please our eyes. I agree
with Postman on this and I believe his claims are far more relevant now in
2014, than when he published his book almost thirty years ago. Now television and
especially the internet have transformed serious topics such as political
elections and social issues to a form of entertainment and “show business”. Unfortunately, we as the audience watch this and encourage this further.While I was reading I realized everything Postman
emphasizes, such as the lack of thought and reason our society has or when he
says we see “through” things and do not analyze what we see or read, is
sadly true. I do not think our ability
to think, analyze, or form opinions by ourselves have been drastically affected,
we just simply choose not to like everybody else. Please comment your opinions on my post or if
you agree/disagree. Thank you for
reading!
Very well worded Maria! And yes I agree with your argument, especially the point you bring up when saying that Postman's arguments are more true to today rather than when the book was published. Also I agree with one of your last points where you say that our abilities are not being compromised, but we are just choosing not to use them. Fewer people are taking their time to write down deep and complex thoughts because more and more people have stopped caring about things like that. Sadly, people just want to be entertained now.
ReplyDeleteYou are spot on when saying that Postman's arguments apply to our modern society more than ever. Television's constant entertainment has led us to detach ourselves from critical thinking and many chose to simply avoid going down that train of thought because they find it to long and boring of a process. I also found his references for his arguments extremely helpful when he was discussing his ideas because I could relate to them like his statement that television has made the president a celebirty and changed the way we think of them.
DeleteThank you Ariel! And yes this reality is extremely sad. Also, thank you Jesus for taking the time to comment! I appreciate it
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