In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
masterfully demonstrates the effect of the shift from printed word to the
images on television. He claims that since our opinions are now being formed by
what we see on television instead of what we read in books, images have become
more important to us than words. One of his strongest examples is that of
presidential candidacy; in today’s culture, overweight men have no decent shot
at the presidency. Postman points out: “the grossness of a three-hundred-pound
image, even a talking one, would easily overwhelm any logical or spiritual
subtleties conveyed by speech” (Postman 7).
Even though the image onscreen may be speaking sensibly and may have
great ideas, we cannot overcome dislike of the image, and therefore discount
the man as a valid candidate. His underlying thesis in the chapter, I believe,
is that the shift from print to television has robbed us of some of our
thinking capacities. Print has traditionally been the basis for higher thinking
and learning, forcing us to visualize and understand what is meant by the words
on the page. Postman claims that the acceptance of the television has made that
irrelevant. The television requires no digestion; it merely feeds us information
through our vision, which we then use as “metaphors” that redefine many parts
of our culture. Even in today’s culture,
I think this argument holds a lot of water, except it could be applied to the
transition between books and the Internet, or television and the Internet. The “mediums”
of television and books have been combined into one ever-available hybrid. If
given the chance to observe modern society, I believe that Postman would still
hold firm to his “amusing ourselves to death” theory. I believe this cryptic phrase
means that we are losing the skills of thought by just taking what the
television or the Internet gives us and failing to take the time to comprehend
the implications before we let it shape our thoughts. We are so obsessed with
amusing ourselves through visual images on the television, or today, the
Internet, that we don’t grasp how the medium affects our formation of
metaphors, which in turn shape our conception of the world around us. Since all of our metaphors are formed by and
through mediums, we have to be exceedingly careful about the mediums we choose
to influence ourselves with. While the Internet and television are great
amusement and entertainment devices, I agree with Postman as to the fact that
the printed word has and should be our primary medium of thought formation.
