All The Things You Never Even Knew You Wanted To Know About Neil Postman
Oh man, if you don't know, your world is about to be rocked. Your mind melted. All of that.
Neil Postman (1931 — 2003) was an American critic and educator. He wrote seventeen books. His most famous (and controversial) was Amusing Ourselves to Death, a screed against television and how it turns everything into banal entertainment — including education and news. Just imagine FOX News during an election cycle and you'll get the idea.
His interests were all over the place. He wrote on the disappearance of childhood, reforming public education, postmodernism, semantics and linguistics, and technopolies. He also wrote essays and lectured about lots of other things that you can find here if you scroll down long enough.
He was a professor of media ecology at New York University and died in 2003.
He said a lot of things, thus those seventeen books. But here are some Big Ideas that have stuck out to me:
I like your attitude, wanting to dig in like that. You're a curious person. Respect.
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
So you read AOtD and loved it. I'm not one to say “I told you so” but if I was this would totally be the place.
Now you're ready for a few more reads.
The internet didn't exist for most of Postman's life (it was called “cyberspace” or the “information superhighway” back in his day), but there are a few things that have made its way to the interwebs:
- Technopoly with Brian Lamb in C-SPAN Booknotes (July 10, 1992 transcript)
- Are We Amusing Ourselves to Death? Part 1 / Part 2 with Richard D. Heffner on Open Mind
- Neil Postman on Cyberspace with Charlene Hunter Gault on PBS (1995)
- Stirring Up Trouble About Technology, Language, and Education with Eugene Rubin in Aurora (Feb 2002)
- CBC Interview (alt)
- He hated answering machines. He thought they were rude.
- He had a thing against cruise control. He once asked a salesperson, “What is the problem to which cruise control is the solution?” The salesperson responded, “It's for people who have trouble keeping their foot on the gas petal.” Postman replied that he had never had that problem before.
He also had a thing against power windows. Same reason as cruise control.
What is an appendix for? Who knows. And yet, here it is.
(Actually it's probably for replenishing gut bacteria. But that's a different kind of appendix.)