Book Report: "Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman

Public Discourse in an Age of Show Business

During the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln shared the stage for seven hours while competing for the hearts and minds of Illinois voters in that year’s US Senate contest. Seven hours! Some of their individual orations went on for two hours during which they fully engaged each other and the issues, used no notes, and spoke in complex and coherent sentences.

And people loved it. Folks sat there through it all, paying careful attention.

For. Seven. Hours.

How is that possible? I mean really…HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?

In his classic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman aims to answer that question. His answer? Nobody watched television. Everybody read. 19th-century America was a profoundly literate culture, in that books and newspapers were the dominant media. The act of reading and writing without distraction formed peoples’ brains in a way suitable to careful thought and argumentation. Frankly, books are what made America great. (And if I may add, what can make America great again. I long to hear our President quote from a good book he happens to be reading. I suspect I will be waiting a while.) America’s political and economic systems and moral and religious landscape were formed through rigorous exposition mediated through reading and writing. It’s why even poorly-educated people in 19th century America were able to communicate and think at more advanced levels than many college-educated folks are, today.

They read books.

We...watch television.

And lots of it--over four hours a day, as of the book’s writing in 1985. In this surprisingly short and prescient work, Postman discusses the manner in which the visual medium has changed the way we think, and the very content of our message. Nothing has been left unscathed: politics, education, the marketplace…even religion. His chapter on how television has cheapened the worship of God had me, as a contemporary preacher ever-conscious of my camera-ready image, lying prostrate on the ground, terrified of the wrath I had wrought.

The book is still widely read and studied in colleges, and is more relevant than ever—even with the slow demise of TV. The internet is TV on steroids, and we are its addicts, bearing its marks. If anybody would read it, we are desperately in need of a second updated edition. But the book is a strong enough rebuke as it is. And we are probably past the point of no return, anyway.

Amusing Ourselves to Death is not without its flaws. The author makes very little attempt to offer any prescription for improvement. (Although how complicated is it to turn off the TV?) Additionally, while I readily agree that television has permanently altered/corrupted how we think and communicate and live together, the TV is one part of a technological revolution that has improved human society in immeasurable ways. Postman pooh-poohs any contribution the television has made except keeping old people in nursing homes company. (Seriously.) He also refuses to acknowledge that the same sort of smart people who invented the television also developed life-saving technologies like the polio vaccine. If we wanted to get rid of polio, we had to accept the A-Team.

Then again, Neil Postman might be of the opinion that all things being equal, he’d rather have polio than the A-Team. And after knowing what growing up on the TV has done to my brain, relationships, and personal happiness—and while also admitting I’ve never had polio—I might agree with him.

-MRH (2/1/2019)