Chapter 11 of Amusing Ourselves to Death: The Huxleyan Warning

"Culture becomes a burlesque" in the Huxleyan way of destroying a culture. It does not matter the ideology. Rather than being forced into compliance, we happily walk into it. In many ways, this is more deadly than the Orwellian world, because the faults of it are sometimes invisible. Instead, we must see that technology is far from neutral, inherently biased. We will not go back to  a world without the technology that we have grown so attached to. One librarian hoped that her criticism of television would get media coverage - on television of course. Television is at its worst when it co-opts serious matters (religion, education) and dilutes them for ease of viewing. No matter what, though, television has to be amusing, or else it won't be watched. If television isn't watched, it is nothing. Because of this, reform of these flaws seems nigh impossible, but educators are becoming media-conscious, and Postman says that we simply have to be aware of what it is we are laughing at.

Chapter 10 of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Teaching as an Amusing Activity

Sesame Street changed everything about education. This "edutainment" was welcomed with open arms by educators, but it changed how children see education itself. It makes them much more receptive to being taught, but only so long as school is Sesame Street style. Postman doesn't of course, blame Sesame Street itself, but rather the creators of television in general, and Postman also doesn't deny that Sesame Street is educational. Television, Postman says, has created the third great learning crisis in the western world, because it is fundamentally changing the way that we learn and what we learn.

The three commandments of television are as follows:

Thou shalt have no prerequisites.
Thou shalt induce no perplexity.
Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt.

Teachers more and more rely on entertaining their students in order to teach them. The Department of Education endorses the use of television as a learning medium, despite evidence otherwise. Education has to become entertainment, or it becomes irrelevant in this society.

How has the internet changed these "commandments?"
Has modern "edutainment" changed the model that Sesame Street began?
Is Sesame Street's long success related to its endorsement by educators?

Chapter 9 of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Reach Out and Elect Someone

It is difficult to compare politics to sports, because in sports everyone knows the rules. Sports are (fairly) transparent, and politics are dirty. Television has only perpetuated this. Commercial advertising has changed the game in an unprecedented way. An average forty-year old, Postman says, will have seen over one million television commercials in that lifetime. We accept the television commercial as a normal form of discourse, so political soundbites are acceptable in these advertisements. In doing this, we simplify things that have to be complicated. We do not trust the complex, so everything must be diluted.

Television does help to show us who is "more capable of negotiation," and who is more knowledgeable, but this is solely through perpetuation of an image. We vote for our own interests. However, Postman says, our interests are largely symbolic. People like Abraham Lincoln could not survive these image politics. Television has no time for history; it is focused solely on the image, and because of that, we are often immediately aware of what is happening, but we do not understand the context.

Orwell was wrong once again. As printed matter fell to the wayside, the government did not need to control print. We have to be entertained constantly.

In what ways can image deceive us?

Would we have elected the same politicians the previous years had image politics not held such great sway over the public?

What are the implications of simplification in regards to art?

Chapter 8 of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Shuffle Off to Bethlehem

Televangelists are more and more commonplace, especially since Postman's writing of this book. The preacher is the focus, and the sermons serve as just another form of televised entertainment. This is not the fault of the preachers themselves, but rather the fault of television as a medium and its biases. Religion is something that is truly untelevisable because it loses its purpose when broadcast in this way. The delivery of the message changes the message itself. Television simply doesn't enforce the state of mind that Postman says is necessary for a religious experience because you can watch that sermon the same way we watch any other television show.

There is also the money. These religious programs make as much money as many other non-religious programs. They have the same production value, their preachers are attractive just like any other main character elsewhere on television. By delivering Christianity as something easy to swallow and easy to understand, it undermines the religion itself. God plays a second role to the entertainment value of the program. God is in our minds, whereas the preacher is immediately available to be idolized.

If it is entertaining, does that mean that religion isn't working?
Is this simply an example of moving into the modern age, or what are the even higher implications?
Does the same hold true for other religions, or has only Christianity been commercialized this way?