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Friday, August 15, 2014
What's Important To You?
A sentence in Chapter Two of Amusing Ourselves to Death will not leave my brain. Postman eloquently states "Besides, we do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant" (16). This statement holds true to this day, but in respect to television. For example, we do not judge teenagers for watching television, we judge them because they are obsessed with Pretty Little Liars, Orange is the New Black, and Game of Thrones. All you hear these days from anyone who is anyone is about the new, time-sucking television show, or the new movie that is coming out. People care more about what people claim to be important on television, rather than television in general. What Postman writes in 20 words can be interpreted and translated into a thousand more. Postman basically warns us to be careful what we deem as important, otherwise people will view our society as superficial. Which we kind of are.
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There is definitely truth in calling our society superficial. I have struggled to find people that I can have a conversation with that does not involve pop culture and other subjects that are useless to our brains and success in life. People find things such as TV shows and movies to be so important that people are frowned upon when admitting to not watching them. It concerns me that such subject matter is so prominent in our society, rather than intellectual information. It's not the fact that watching air-headed television is wrong, but what those shows take away from us is the use of that time to be put towards building upon our knowledge.
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