After reading the first chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman it seems as though he is just trashing our current culture and the advancement of our technology. He ends his chapter by writing, "We do not see nature of intelligence or human motivation or ideology as 'it' is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our cultures"(pg. 15). Earlier in the chapter he claimed that "...forms of media favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking command of a culture"(9). The original sentence talks about how our language limits us in our understanding. The languages connect our mind with ideas of different objects. This language makes our culture what it is. Taking in all that he said in the first, I would say that he makes a claim that our society is so caught up in entertainment that we are becoming too lazy and using so many metaphors to make language easier that it is making the people in this day and age dumber. The claim to his whole book is obviously that we are amusing ourselves to the point of farm or in his words death.
Yes, obviously there are a lot of people that are learning the shortcuts to learning new information and end up not learning as much in the process. The media helps these lazy people by giving on small pieces of information on a variety of topics and then on top of that only provide news of things that are entertaining to watch. One example would obviously be how almost every news station in the United States has one time or another told a story about the Kardashians. Another common example would be how every single news channel has an attractive weather lady. When was the last time you saw an overweight weather lady blocking the whole screen and pointing at some clouds? People have strayed away from newspapers, which don't get me wrong do have information in them that is almost is pointless as the Kardashians, and instead started watching tv which has far less useful information in it Postman writes, "Our politics, religions, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice"(3-4). His next line states that the outcome of this is the title of his work. I would definitely disagree with this. Education isn't much of a show business. There have been aspects of technology added to education that does make it entertaining, but it is no where close to the point of being show business. True educational institutions are not meant to entertain but were created for the sole purposes of education and money. Religion is an aspect that slightly falls under the showbiz category. The religions that fall under these categories are not the old ones that have been around for over 1000 years, but rather they are the religions that people create to make money, entertain(showbiz), or on the rare occasion start a church about the aspects of religion that they truly believe in so that they can help make others' lives better. There is obviously aspects of showbiz that leak into different aspects of life, but they come no where close to ruining our society. There are people who use media as a shortcut for learning and are so obsessed with entertaining themselves that they don't reach their full potential. There are also hard-workers though that strive to be the best they can and be as smart as they can to make the world a better place. These people will not let dumb news-people ruin their chance to become smarter. They will push through and reach their full potential.
While Postman writes that Las Vegas is the "focal point of radiating American spirit"(3). I would strongly disagree. I would say that a city like New York is a city with radiates the most important American spirit of working hard in order to keep the world running and make the world a safer, smarter, and better world to live in. I believe that the spirit that radiates out of New York is much more strong than the entertainment spirit of Las Vegas. All in all I do agree that many people in America do harm themselves by getting too caught up in entertainment, but I believe that Postman over exaggerates the harm done by this.
Honestly though, if you wake up in the morning and need the weather, who would you rather watch?
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