Month: February 2024

Postman saw a connection with Huxley’s novel and so do I. Huxel’s novel Barve new world talk about a future of humanities where people are divided into Alphas, Betas, Deltas, and gamma. Alphas being the best which are on the top of the chain and gammas on the bottom, the worst. In this fictional world, if a person feels sadness or some other emotion that is not happiness, then they will take some Soma. A drug that doesn’t have any second effect. Postman’s essay Amusing us to death talks about today’s society that all things are made so that it is amusing.

The connection is the television and the soma. If we’re not happy or we don’t feel well, we watch television and in Brave new world say take the Soma. Even Postman says it “Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Barve New World” (p. 111).

 

When reading the book Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley and the book Amusing ourselves to Death by Neil postman, it raised the question for me: Is anything in the book we see as happiness, is that even real happiness or is it just something they were told to be by soma or television. Is constant amusement and happiness a good things, or is all this irrelevant happiness provided in these books eventually going to degrade us into shells of what we used to be and projections of what we want to be. I made a similar conclusion while in a heated debate a had with a classmate a few year ago. We were arguing about just this: infinite happiness. They argued that if we were happy all the time then all of our problems would be solved and there would be peace and agreement among everyone. Then I said something that very much relates to what both books are expressing. I said “Happiness all the time is the equivalent of not feeling anything at all: you might as well be a fish in a fish bowl!” What I had mean by saying this is that If you don’t feel any thing and are happy all the time, what is to become of you? without ambition, anger or pain to push you forward you might as well sit is a fish bowl, observing every eye-catching thing that amuses you.

In Brave new world this is exactly the case where there is an abundance of unconditional happiness in the for of soma. There was no more diseases or sadness because there was now no need for it with soma. But at the same time, with happiness being the only thing the characters in Brave New World felt, they had no anger or sadness in them to realize any of the oppression and control they were under. It was as Postman said when comparing Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world: “Huxley feared what we love will ruin us” (Postman N. Amusing Ourselves to Death). The people in Brave New World were literally hypnotised into doing what the government and the Controller wanted them to do and rewarded them with soma and feelies. This is eerily similar to how you give a pet a treat after completing a trick despite having kidnapped them, imprisoned them and control their lives. Despite this they love you, like the people is Brave New World “would come to love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think” – (Postman N. Amusing Ourselves to Death).

In Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death this is also the case when Postman describes his worries that the age of showmanship and television poses to the people of today. He described how the television and the age of showmanship is slowly rotating people’s beliefs to rather than trust the most trust worthy product, but the product with the prettiest people and the most amusing jingles. As Neil Postman described his concerns

“Although the constitution makes no mention of it, it would appear that fat people are now effectively excluded from running for high political office. Probably bald people as well. Almost certainly those whose looks are not significantly enhanced by the cosmetician’s art. Indeed we may have reached the point where cosmetics have replaced ideology in the field of expertise”

– Postman’s Amusing ourselves to death (p. 4)

Now people, much like brave new world are being conditioned to trust these smiling faces built on empty promises to lead a country. Much like Aldous Huxley’s Brave new world we are coming love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo our capacities to think.

Now as I look back at these two books do I realise how much they mirror the world we like in today. How kids in class today need constant in class entertainment or else they clock out. How politics showcased on the news is only ever about trivial high-stake things. And how even religions that are supposed to be full of sacrifice and honour have now accommodated to the media to become something its not. How everything we see is now a sea of irrelevance and we a fish in a bowl, watching it for our amusnment.

 

 

 

 

 

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right, then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”

There was a long silence.

‘I claim them all,’ said the Savage at last.

-Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (p. 211)

 

Of all the perceptions relating to technology and the removal of individual thought in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, what stuck most in my mind were those relating to true happiness in the Brave New World, and how soma fits into our own modern, technological world.

Reading in class was actually the second time I’ve read the first book, and while I was able to grasp concepts and ideas much clearer, the same concept stood out to me:  happiness and what it meant in the Brave New World, where everyone is happy, but no one knows the true meaning of unhappiness. I couldn’t help but think in circles. What would I choose to do with my life if I had the choice of the Brave New World, fully conditioned, or a life elsewhere? Certainly, life in the Brave New World would be joyful, but I would be robbed of all the consciousness which gave me the ability to comprehend what that meant or why it was at all significant. For I see true happiness as a happiness which you feel that you don’t deserve; happiness which you have to relish because you know that it can slip away and that not everyone can enjoy it. In the Brave New World where happiness is regular and a constant part of life, it would never be anything out of the ordinary – never anything to enjoy and hold on to. In normal life, my troubles could be lacking the comforts of the Brave New World; in the Brave New World, I would be oblivious, never knowing what I was missing.

The next thing which stood out to me was soma, and its connections to social media and technology in our culture. This was pointed out several times during Amusing Ourselves to Death, but Postman’s argument lacked the strength with which it could have had written today. One of the disparities which stood out to me most was where Postman writes about how the pace of television, and also how we “expect books and even other media (such as film) to maintain a consistency of content… we have no such expectation of television” (p. 104). While this is certainly true, in today’s world our pace and continuity of content have sped up and decreased even more. With sites such as YouTube and TikTok, where you need absolutely no context for what you watch, where videos may be seconds long and they can be passed by the instant that we cease to be interested by their content – perhaps because we find the speaker unattractive and uninteresting – Postman’s arguments can be seen in a more potent modern form.

It reminds me of a quote in the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma:” We’re training and conditioning a whole new generation of people that when we are uncomfortable or lonely or uncertain or afraid, we have a digital pacifier for ourselves, which is atrophying our own ability to deal with that.” Just like the soma in Brave New World, social media is becoming increasingly normalized as a way to block out the world when we are anxious, troubled, or upset – leaving us unable to deal with our emotions.

A key distinction which can be made is that the “Orwellian” world is tyrannized by an extreme ideological group, while the in the “Huxleyian,” it is controlled by technology (Postman, p.155). The question is whether that world is a utopia or a dystopia – if everyone is constantly happy, would happiness cease to have any significance? In a world where technology becomes increasingly integral to our daily lives and AI abounds, it merits looking at. Many of our visions of the future contain technology, and it is depicted negatively and positively. It reminds me of movies such as the Terminator series, where a computer intelligence attempts to take over by force, and the fears that some people have of artificial intelligence as a result. However, upon reflection it seems that the smarter option would be to gain control from the inside: corrupting our culture and discourse through technology, bit by bit, until no one would be alarmed or even conscious of what was happening. As Postman writes, it is not necessary to conceal anything uninteresting from a culture which is used to contradictions and diversions (p.111) – they have no interest.

In “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman, the author reviews and correlates his ideas to the concept provided by Aldous Huxley in “Brave New World”. Melville contends with Huxley’s future depicted in “Brave New World” where there is an infinite consumption of goods and instant gratification that is more relevant to society than in 1984 by George Orwell. Postman, however, like Huxley, thinks so, according to the depiction of the world as nearly full of entertainment and instant satisfaction. He believes that his words are similar to what we are living now. He expresses his worry that our obsession with entertainment and the distribution of information through media can result in forgetting to be able to use critical thinking and hold deeply meaningful conversations.

“Amusing Ourselves to Death” shows that Postman knew that it was necessary to have a sort of self-awareness and evaluate the media that we see which can be distractive rather than a blind trust. He thinks that if we just get our acts right on the issue by recognizing the dangers of Huxley’s utopia and taking part in the concerts held in our communities then we would have a world which goes beyond just the smooth way.

Author Neil Postman from “Amusing Ourselves to Death” portrayed the conclusion that a “Brave New World” dystopian future was imminent. The dystopian novel “Brave New World”, written by Aldous Huxley, reveals a scary window into the reality of our own world. The novel depicts a world where technological advances have solved all of society’s problems, at the cost of humanity. Once you begin to accept the unnerving connections between this fictional world and our own, it explains our culture’s risk of disintegration. Huxley warns that too much technology while bringing comfort, could obscure beauty and truth. Our society has unconsciously fallen victim to an ideology defined by entertainment technology. Postman’s novel warns society of the dangers of mass media, and passivity, and how even an intelligent nation, like our own, can and will undoubtedly choose dictatorship over freedom. Enough evidence is available in our everyday lives, demonstrating what technology can undo in a culture. Huxley’s predictions are being fulfilled. With our full embrace of television, we’ve unconsciously undertaken an experiment in giving ourselves over to the distractions of technology. Television imposes a way of life in which we find comfort and reassurance. It’s launched a cultural revolution without discussion or resistance. As many probably know, an individual holds an infinite appetite for distractions, as we, similar to the society of “A Brave New World” are people controlled by seeking and inflicting pleasure. In the end, becoming victims of what Huxley feared: what we love will ruin us.

Postman compares modern society to the past, demonstrating that technology is becoming a distraction. Entertainment is arrogating our lives and making them more meaningless as we are provided with the illusion of knowing, but in reality, are facing the deprivation of autonomy, maturity, and history. Entertainment isn’t bad, but a model of life in which individuals have a right to be always entertained doesn’t appear to be a promising one. Postman offers the following perspectives on how to fight against the imprisonment of technology. Firstly, you direct the attack to only the people who are willing to listen to the complexity, but those aren’t the people enslaved by entertainment anyway. Your second option would be to find some way to make entertainment entertaining, in which you have been captured by the very thing you’re fighting against. As these options reveal no immediate escape from entertainment our world is slowly shifting into one mimicking that of “A Brave New World”. Huxley feared that those who would give us so much information, referring to television, would lead to a society reduced to passivity and egoism. The truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance as we became a trivial culture, forced to surrender culture to technology, mimicking the structure of the society in “A Brave New World”. Our modern struggle is to reclaim our individuality and awaken ourselves to the dangers of distraction and apathy.

Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, illustrates a utopian setting that calls for reflection and inquiry. In a future society with an abundance of technology, hypnopaedia, and the pursuit of trivial pleasure, active individual thought is relegated to the sidelines, leading to what I consider a superficial and inhumane concept of reality. Huxley’s use of imagery, descriptive language, and tone allowed me to be captured by the story and characters while also finding a deeper meaning within his words. The mass entertainment and representation of drugs through soma served as tools to pacify and dehumanize society; this is not far from the modern reality we live in and a fair estimate on Huxley’s behalf of what future generations would become. In today’s world, where entertainment through television and social media advances rapidly and shapes public discourse, Huxley’s warning within the pages was clear to me: letting technology surpass depth and critical thought in importance goes against the humanitarian imperative and is a dereliction of (what some would call) human duty. Pursuing a society similar to the vision Huxley created seems dangerous, and somewhat stupid, to me after finishing the novel, which shows the impact of his narrative. In connection with Brave New World, Postman’s essay length novel, Amusing Ourselves to Death, follows a similar theme of a society that sacrifices depth of individuality for immediate pleasure and amusement.

Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, argues that television, and by extension, most visual media, shapes public thought and contributes to a decline in society’s ability to engage in meaningful discourse. He procures the idea that, with the shift from a print-based culture to an image-based culture, “[Americans] do not exchange ideas, they exchange images,” (Postman, N. 2010). This was the concept that stuck with me, as I feel I have experienced the transitional period between both realities. As a child, my main source of education was through literature and children’s books, and it was not until I was four or five that I started to become interested in television. Nowadays, it is harder to escape social media, television, and the internet; they surround everyone, everyday. Postman explores the connection between Brave New World and the world he saw years ago, and now more than ever his assertions seem relevant to me. The idea that technological advancements, entertainment, and instant-gratification are the components that society is actively seeking, whether consciously or subconsciously, alter my thinking in regard to media. It encourages me to participate in deeper discourse on the topics that surround my everyday life, and grow to understand the true affects and subtle subjugation of individual thought.

In contrast, Postman’s work delves into the detrimental effects of the media-saturated culture, arguing that our addiction to entertainment and instant gratification has eroded critical thinking and meaningful discourse. While both works explore the manipulation of mass media and its impact on society, they diverge in their approaches: Huxley warns of a future where technology subjugates humanity to a superficial existence, while Postman laments the degradation of intellectual engagement amidst the onslaught of trivial information.

Despite their differing contexts and perspectives, Brave New World and Amusing Ourselves to Death have a similar concern for the loss of human connection and communication between the society. Both Huxley and Postman had warning people the happiness on mental might cause degradation of values and a loss of individual agency.

Amusing Ourselves to Death and Brave New World talk and address the same topic, the impact that technology has on society. In Brave New World, Huxley belief that technology controls society. His ideology is that technology makes life easier for us by controlling everything around us, even our emotions, feelings, and thoughts. He introduces to us a world that doesn’t think or worry about anything. A world where  the controllers  dictate each individual’s beliefs, thoughts, and lives. Using laugher and a happy world to take our worries and problems away leading us to an invisible jail. Characters such as Bernard or Helmholtz that are in discomfort with a happily ever after world and want a different world, shows the author’s critics to this utopia.

Postman on the other hand, on Amusing Ourselves to Death exposes his argument about technology specifically television, that all of them comes with a package. He worries about how television teaches us. Changing drastically how we entertain, learn, socialize, and communicate between us. Postman writes a book long essay to inform us about his concern where entertainment becomes the major focus in society. The New Age, where the important information are trivial questions; people in charge are Hollywood celebrities, and no one takes for serious any kind of important matter. Both of this books had an influential perspective on the way I see life. At the end, technology always comes with a package deal, good or bad for our society.  Even though these two authors thought about the same, they express it in a completely different effective way.

There are definitely connections between Neil Postman’s ” Amusing ourselves to Death” and Huxley’s novel “Brave New world.” Both works talk about the impact of technology and media on society, warning about the dangers of being consumed by entertainment and false information. Postman makes clean lines between Huxley’s vision of a society with pleasure and fun and the potential consequences of a society that makes amusement more important the critical thinking skills and. Both explore the positives, negatives, and concerns of technology in new forms and generations.

Additionally, both Postman and Huxley highlight the effects culture driven by the “instant gratification effect”. And the constant pursuit of pleasure. They make a clear argument for a world where meaningful communication and and genuine human relations are considered unnecessary.

 

To reflect on the question “Is Postman’s argument relevant in the internet age?”, I feel it is even more relevant. The assertions he wrote about to which I found most relating to today’s internet is the attention span we are limited to and that everything on TV is created as entertainment. The attention spans that entertainment companies have to tend to when creating the guidelines of entertainment has not changed. For example, Tik Tok is an application that allows endless scrolling of videos with an average length of 34 seconds. This is similar to the argument Postman made in saying that television shows and advertisements have windows of 7-8 seconds to display a particular image or depiction before the camera switches angles. Anything longer and your viewer’s attention is lost. It scares me to know that our ability to change the channel or swipe to the next video is extremely and effortlessly easy. This makes me wonder what we will never be able to focus on in the future. The second assertion I found relevant was the argument that everything put on a screen is made for our entertainment. A comment that made me chuckle and immediately think of this book is when I judged my sister in saying “that’s entertaining for you?” when I saw her watching someone play with slime on YouTube. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that someone could say the same for me. And that someone could have the same thing said for them about what they choose to watch as entertainment. For me, I am genuinely entertained watching someone do their morning makeup and talking about an argument they had with a friend. Who is this women? Why do I care to spend my time watching her? These are questions I raised to myself after thinking about his assertion that anything can be used and everything is used, as entertainment. It also reminded me about how breaking the spell can minimally mean questioning our environments. These ideas provoke the thought that nothing we watch can be put under a different category of entertainment. Everything to do with TV or social apps is of the same value, stupidity, and extent of wasted precious time.

I believe that Postman’s critique of society in 1985 lines up with Huxley’s critique of society in the 1930s through their cooperating ideas of soma and the dramatic change in our understanding of relevance and applicability towards entertainment. I found a connection between Postman’s essay and Huxley’s novel in their formulation of describing how we deal with sadness or stress. In Brave New World the characters take a medicinal “soma” that has been made to immediately take away the emotional and physical effects of unpleasant human emotions. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, he describes our numbing of unpleasant emotions as watching TV. It has occured to me as a result of reading this book that when we feel something, or encounter something we don’t know how to deal with, we find comfort in distracting our brains with television. It is interesting to me that both Huxley and Postman comment on how society attempts to make uncomfortable feelings disappear. Well, disappear for long enough to forget about them. The second critique I correlated between the two was that everything we are presented is for the sole purpose of amusement and therefore leads to a lack in our emotional reactions. It is evident that Postman attempts to explain the different instances where serious matters become entertainment. These instances being religion, education, and politics. One of his example is that a person can watch the news on a massacre somewhere in the world and still sleep silently that night. His point led here is that by putting events and information on TV, it degrades the value and emotional response it should spark. From this, I have come to realize that this is similar to in BNW where Huxley writes about how the citizens laugh at any play put on for them. Whether the plot is a tragedy or comedy. In my opinion this connection can be related into our futures as, curiosity did not kill the cat, oblivion did.

In assaying Aldous Huxley’s” Brave New World” and Neil Postman’s” Entertaining Ourselves to Death,” it’s apparent how both authors give study-provoking examples of their separate societies. Huxley’s depiction of a dystopian world emphasizes the dominance of pleasure and superficial happiness, achieved through exertion and the repression of individuality and critical thinking. On the other hand, Postman delves into the mischievous impact of mass media and entertainment, arguing that our society’s obsession with recreation results in the trivialization of significant matters and a decline in our capability to engage in meaningful conversations.   

Although these authors explore different aspects of societal control and manipulation, there are inarguable parallels between them. Postman himself draws connections, pressing the resemblance between our ultramodern world and Huxley’s dystopia, where we’re constantly bombarded with distractions that desensitize us to the realities of our actuality. Both authors advise against the threats of an unresistant population, whether it’s through mindlessly consuming entertainment or accepting a destined pleasure-focused actuality. As readers, we’re encouraged to contemplate how our society reflects the themes presented in these books and consider the consequences for our future.

 

In my opinion, I see a very important connection between Postman’s ideas and Huxley’s novel. In “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Postman criticizes television’s negative effects on public discourse and intellectual engagement. He argues that the change from a print culture to a visual culture, driven mainly by television, has led to a society more focused on entertainment than on debates which should be discussed or taken of greater importance. Similarly, Huxley’s “Brave New World” explores an imaginary or fantasy future where advanced technology and entertainment lead to a passive, dehumanized society. In both works, there is a shared concern about the possible loss of critical thinking and the importance of communication and individuality in the face of technological and entertainment influences.

Both Postman and Huxley warn of a future in which the endless pursuit of pleasure and saturation of distractions could lead to a society with a huge lack of deep reflection and meaningful connections. The differences between Postman and Huxley are that Postman speaks or interprets history at the end of the 20th century and Huxley’s vision of a pleasure-driven and controlled society in the future highlights the importance of his ideas about the potential dangers of technological progress. which today is advancing faster and faster.

In the exploration if utopias and dystopias we find two books that are so different but at the same time they are very similar, “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman and “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley are two powerful critiques of modern society. I find a connection between the two books because they both provide critiques about the dangers of technology in today’s society.

The differences they have is that Brave New World is centered in a modern full of technology dystopia where everything is given by pleasure. Technology on this book is so advanced that progress leads to a dehumanized society. Which leads to a pursuit of pleasure and gratification, facilitated by technology, that has as a result the loss of individuality and meaningful human connections. On the other hand, Amusing Ourselves to death is a critique about how television has change our society nowadays, affection our influence of visual media and our public discourse. These 2 books reflect on our present reality were the influence of technology is a challenge to our society.

 

In both Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, the authors critique how technology and entertainment affect society. Huxley shows a future where pleasure and technology make life shallow. Postman warns that too much entertainment and trivial information can harm critical thinking. Both of the books remind us to think about how we use technology and media in our lives.

I think that the books have connections with our reality in different ways, in Huxley’s world they are based on pleasure, now a days we want to do everything as simpler and faster as we can, the less we think the better, we base our decisions on temporal pressure or satisfaction. In Postman’s book, we can relate on how TV and phones have affected our ways of learning, we can’t focus on things that are “boring” because we are used to the instant pleasure of scrolling and having all the information we want when we want. Both books have the same purpose just with different ways of developing it.

“Amusing Ourselves to Death” and “Brave New World” are two different but at the same time not so different books. Both books talk about controlling people in different ways. While in Amusing Ourselves to Death they control people by inflicting pain, in Brave New World they control them by inflicting pleasure. The Brave New World society is principally characterized by using technology to keep people happy and for them not to worry about anything. The society is fully governed by the government of this world and they control every aspect of every persons life. The government maintains the stability of the society trough hypnopedia, suspension of emotions, and the promotion of consumerism. Huxley wants to basically transmit through this book that life is easier if technology takes care of us by controlling everything we do, think, or even feel.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman describes the impact that television has had on public discourse, culture and the society back in 1985. He argues that television through entertainment and visual simulation has completely ended with the society critical thinking. While in Brave New World, Aldous says that in a future technology will be used to supress and control peoples disobedience, Postman says that technology or more specifically, television, can distract or even completely destroy people’s way of thinking. A clear connection between this two books is the way they express concern about the impact that technology has on society. Both authors based their works on the ways that technology, wether through conditioning, hypnopedia, in Brave New World or on the other hand, television, on Amusing ourselves to death can shape societal values, behaviors, and intellectual engagement in potentially detrimental ways. 

Considering both the “Brave New World” and “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” I see obvious similarities between the impossible worlds represented in these two works. While Huxley’s novel shows a future society based on satisfaction and simple entertainment, Postman’s analysis highlights the dangers of a culture obsessed with unfocused joy and insignificance. Both stories are critical stories, alerting us about the dangers of giving in to the draw of immediate joy and distraction.

In “Brave New World,” Huxley paints a relaxing picture of a world where individuality is ignored in for in line and excess. Citizens in this society are kept pacified by a constant watch of superficial benefits, making them passive and compliant. Similarly, Postman’s analysis of contemporary culture in “Amusing Ourselves to Death” shows how the growth of media for entertainment has resulted in a society that is more preoccupied with enjoyment than with serious participation and critical thinking. The similarities between these two works are obvious, serving as an alarming reminder of the dangers when we give up control of our minds to the draw of small distractions. As we navigate an increasingly captured and entertainment-saturated world, it becomes critical to pay attention to warnings of these creative works and look for a balance of joy and learning.