Amusing Ourselves to Death

  Wow.

  It's hard to believe a book can be so dated and so compelling at the same time.

  Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was recommended to me some time ago, and it soon became one of the many books I bought but appeared to have no intention to read.  I picked it up yesterday on a whim, and had a hard time putting it down.

  Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985, and focuses on the intrusion of television into our daily lives.  Postman argues, very well, that television has changed the way we think as well as the way we learn--television has convinced us that we must be entertained, even if we may not be learning.  Postman looks at all the advantages that television brings, and breaks them down, explaining why our ability to hear news from around the world is actually not an advantage at all.  It is dumbing us down, slowly but surely, to the point where even our schools have succumbed to trying simply to entertain rather than educate.

  Postman tackles everything on television, from the News Hour to Sesame Street to sitcoms to televised preaching.  In regard to preaching, he writes:
on television, religion, like everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an entertainment.  Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual transcendence.  On these shows, the preacher is tops.  God comes out as second banana.


  Postman's ideas are well-worth considering for those involved in church leadership--are we seeking to entertain and amuse, or to be transformed by the living Word of God?  Are we hoping to transform, or merely find laughter and high ratings?

  Much of this book is dated, but all of it speaks directly to our culture today, perhaps even more so than it did in its time.  It provides serious, thought-provoking arguments about how television shapes us, as individuals, as families, as cultures, and grants food for thought about how to resist seeking mere entertainment and to pursue lives that are educated, well-rounded, and devoted to faithfulness above all else.

--------------
  Here's an interesting video summing up Postman's theory that it was not George Orwell's vision of the future in 1984 that we had to fear, but rather Aldous Huxley's in Brave New World.