Huxleyan Warning: Amusing Ourselves to Death, Chapter 11

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Intro Ch. 1 Ch. 2 Ch. 3 Ch. 4 {pt 1} Ch. 4 {pt 2} Ch. 5 Ch. 6 Ch. 7 
Ch. 8 Ch. 9 {pt 1} Ch. 9 {pt 2} Ch. 10 Ch. 11

Part II, Chapter 11 The Huxleyan Warning

I have begun to read 1984 and also picked up Darkness at Noon as recommended by Postman in this last chapter to "have a fairly precise blueprint of the machinery of thought-control as it currently operates in scores of countries and on millions of people" (p. 155)". He also recommends Animal Farm, which I have already read.

It is Huxley, however that is the more correct with his prophecy: "in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate" (p. 155). Postman directs this mostly to America, perhaps because that is where he lives and sees it taking place most, but I dare say it is world wide. Postman thought that most should have been aware of what was going on but he does point out most have been trained to see when an Orwellian world is threatening, not a Huxleyan world. We would put up quite a fight if Orwell's world were to materialize. On the opposite end, "who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?" (p. 156)

By now we should have realized that technology is an ideology and it has the power to change cultures. 

"To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple...Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance...All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress...We believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement." (p. 157, 158, emphasis mine)

So what can be done? There are two options as Postman sees it, and one is really not an option at all. The television {electronics} is not going anywhere; we must first realize that. That is the first option that isn't really an option. Turn off the television. No one will turn off the television {electronics} completely and for good. No one. I mean that to include even the Amish, some of who refuse modern conveniences like electricity; many have cell phones and internet, if not television. {Okay, fine perhaps there are people who have gone completely off-grid...}

Back in 1984 there were attempts at having "TV Turnoff" events. There are likely to have been similar ones more recently. {Indeed there are: Screen-Free Week (this year it is May 5-11); International TV-Turnoff Week (2006, I think)} I found the The New York Times article Postman quotes from: THE REGION; Town Is Planning 2d 'TV Turnoff'. It is interesting to note that the librarian who proposed the activity is not quoted by Postman. What she said was, "We're not really hoping for a media event this time, although that helped in some ways the last time. We're aiming at educating parents to realize why they should turn it off or cut down or be selective in what they and their children watch." The irony is evident much more by Postman's quote of Ms. Ellen Babcock. I got a chuckle out of the last sentence in the paragraph because here I am discussing this book against not just television but all that has come after it on the very media that it is against-

"It is an irony I have confronted many times in being told that I must appear on television to promote a book that warns people against television. Such are the contradictions of a television-based culture." (p. 159)

Really turning off the television {giving up the electronics} is not a viable option because people will not do it. Not even I. We don't have television in the sense that we can watch it, except with DVDs. My phone I don't think has internet capability. I've never tried nor looked to see if it does. It doesn't even have a camera, and I cannot receive images or photos. But even so, I won't give up my electronics. So this isn't really an option.

Postman is also quite pessimistic about changing the quality of television programs as an option. Instead he says that we have to change how we watch because we will watch. There are some questions that need to be asked about this thing called television.

"We have apparently advanced to the point where we have grasped the idea that a change in the forms, volume, speed and context of information means something, but we have not got any further...Does television, for example, give a new meaning to "piety," to "patriotism," to "privacy"? Does television give new meaning to "judgment" or to "understanding"? (p. 160)

And there are many more questions to ask {he lists at least a dozen other than the ones I quoted} before we can really see the television for what it is. "To ask is to break the spell," he says. The only part that Postman misses the mark is like I mentioned in last chapter's post: he failed to predict the impact of the computer. It has taken up where television left off and, even more so, is plunging us into a Huxleyan world.

Ultimately, education is the only possible solution to this problem. But his "hope" is not going to be realized by the public schools. It might be through private schools {but only a few I would dare say} or homeschools because as he says, 

"it is an acknowledged task of the schools to assist the young in learning how to interpret the symbols of their culture. That this task should now require that they learn how to distance themselves from their forms of information is not so bizarre an enterprise that we cannot hope for its inclusion in the curriculum; even hope that it will be placed at the center of education." (p. 163, emphasis mine)

It can't happen in the schools because the drive to keep and get more of the gizmos and technology that makes it super easy to have so much information is in those schools. Schools are not helping students learn to distance themselves. They cannot. What a major upheaval it would be to take away all of the electronic junk that feeds in "information" to the schools! They don't know that they are not thinking. They have all the information at their fingertips and don't realize that without them they would have to think.

And that is how the book ends. The only hope is to make people question technology and actually think about it. I say technology where Postman said television because as he himself stated "technology comes equipped with a program for social change," it isn't neutral by any means and it isn't always 'friendly'. And technology is many different things. Today it is television AND electronic gizmos, internet, i-things, smartphones, and etc.