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.