The Dumbing Down of America: An Intro to Neil Postman in 4 Quotes
“Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you.”
-Flannery O’ Connor
Neil Postman doesn’t unveil a truth that you can’t unsee. Neil Postman gives you a set of glasses that you can’t take off.
For much of my life, I’ve felt like a fish out of water. It’s a feeling that started in high school and reached full germination in college and the years afterward. I’d had what most people would call “a religious experience” my sophomore year which set me on a deep, all-encompassing search for truth that would define the next decade of my life.
But while I set off to join the Great Conversation and hopefully figure out the meaning of life along the way, it seemed that nearly everyone around me was on a different path. Not that I didn’t enjoy a good movie or sporting event, but while I filled my time reading philosophy books and trying to understand the Bible and the Q’uran- I found that my friends were filling their free time watching NFL games and the Bachelor.
It wasn’t that we had different strategies- it was that we were playing a different game. I was simply optimizing my life for maximum understanding while they were optimizing for maximum entertainment.
Then I found Neil. His 1985 classic Amusing Ourselves to Death not only put words to what I was feeling- he gave me the cultural backstory, an expert’s diagnosis and more than anything Postman let me know that I wasn’t alone in the sea of American distractionism.
Let me introduce you to Neil Postman in four ideas through four quotes.
1. The Medium is the Metaphor
[My book] postulates that how we are obliged to conduct our conversations will have the strongest possible influence on what ideas we can conveniently express. And what ideas are convenient to express inevitably become the important content of a culture.
Imagine if Dave Chapelle went into a comedy club, got up onstage and instead of telling edgy, brilliant jokes- he read off a 10 page treatise on particle physics. Or flip it- imagine Stephen Hawking defending his PhD dissertation with one-liners on his professor’s poor haircut.
It doesn’t matter how funny Stephen’s jokes are or how penetrating Dave’s treatise is- they will both be booed off their respective stage.
In communication, the context (or the medium) defines everything.
Postman recognized this and more importantly he recognized that with the mass adoption of the television set, we had gone from the university lecture hall to the comedy club as an entire culture.
TV wasn’t an addition to our lives- it ushered in a completely new intellectual ecosystem- one that eventually produced a much different set of Americans.
2. The Peak of American Intellectual life (was 200 years ago)
“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
Abraham Lincoln met Frederick Douglas for a series of debates in the 1850s. The stakes were high and the debate would have been heated with the looming buildup to the civil war. For Postman, though, the stars of the show were not Lincoln and Douglas- it was the audience.
For instance, in 1854, after a 3-hour opening by Douglas:
“Lincoln reminded the audience that it was 5pm, that he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return refreshed for four more hours of talk. The audience amiably agreed and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined.” (Amusing Ourselves to Death, p. 44)
What kind of audience was this? What kind of America was this where two educated men (not yet presidential or even senatorial candidates) could show up in a small Illinois town and farmers, butchers, and bankers would fill the seats so they could listen to complex oratory for seven hours (with zero pictures, of course).
While our Instagram generation glories in its chronological snobbery, a quick study of history or read of Postman, makes it clear that 19th and 20th century America was infused across class boundaries with a vibrant, literate intellectualism that hadn’t been seen before- and unfortunately- hasn’t been seen since.
3. The News Makes us Dumber
“Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.”
We’re finally coming to grips with the idea that just because information exists does not mean we should take it in. While the science has just started coming in, Tim Ferriss has espoused his “low-information diet” for at least the last decade and Cal Newport has assembled a Digital Minimalist philosophy for our technological moment. While the sheer force of the digital information firehose has never been stronger, the seeds for information overload were planted centuries ago.
On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse dispatched the first telegraphic message over an experimental line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore. This ushered in a new age in American communication and facilitated a new connected age in American life.
For the first time a man in Iowa could get real time news of what was happening in Connecticut. The issue was that no one stopped to ask if Iowans needed to know what was going on in Connecticut.
Up until this point, the news and information available was regional and generally practical. The transition from the book to the telegraph introduced massive amounts of irrelevant, unactionable information. The resulting incoherence was not just a new practical problem but one that would alter Americans’ ideas about truth itself.
4. Technology as a Danger to Democracy
“If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.”
Where were you when Donald Trump won the US presidential election in 2016? The question on my mind as I sat in my apartment was: “what kind of country would elect Donald Trump?”
This wasn’t left-wing antagonism- it was a genuine question.
What were we looking for in a president? What value do we place on truth in our society? How has the internet age changed us?
That Donald Trump could have become president a hundred years ago- or even ten years ago- is laughable. But in the postmodern milieu of twitter, niche news, and all the rest- it makes perfect sense.
While republicans rejoiced and liberals sulked, my thoughts that election night were entirely on a question raised all the way back in 1985- have we amused ourselves to death?
Conclusion
After college, I tried to get my roommate to read “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. He couldn’t get through it. Too many arguments, not enough... pictures? I don’t know.
So, while the irony of a “quick blogpost” about the importance of medium and the supremacy of the book is not lost on me, perhaps it’s the appetizer our generation needs to the Neil Postman entree that just might keep us alive. Do yourself (and your country) a favor and pick up a copy.
As Neil’s son, Andrew, wrote in the 20th Anniversary edition:
“There’s still time.”
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Images: Chappelle: John Bauld from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons | Tim Ferriss: Julia de Boer / The Next Web, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons