Amusing Ourselves To Death

In 1985 Neil Postman wrote the book Amusing Ourselves To Death in which he stated that “America [and I would add the world] is in danger of amusing itself to death by transforming every significant issue into a matter of cultural amusement”, he was just taking about television, if he lived in this internet age I believe this indictment would be jacked up tenfold. Albert Mohler commented that he Postman was probably responding to the election of men like Ronald Ragan, an actor, as US president. South Africa is not different. The reason we (the youth) like Julius Malema is because he is an entertainer. In my opinion not a single sane young person looks up to him as some form of a role model.

We are amusing ourselves to intellectual death   

Entertainment doesn’t require one to reflect on anything, it presents itself as relative and not authoritative, funny, engaging but not demanding, educational but not forceful. Propositions are not always supported with convincing arguments but are masked with creative humour so that people receive them without thinking. My generation doesn’t think and it baffles me that we call ourselves the enlightened generation when we don’t even examine to “light” itself. Sitcoms are a perfect a perfect examples of this; they communicate messages but very few of us take time to decipher those messages. We receive them as they are or we dismiss them as merely humour, but I think no content is meaningless because behind everything there are presuppositions and those manifest themselves in art. Therefore all forms of art a vehicle of ideas. Failure to recognise this is a sign of intellectual death.

We are amusing ourselves to illiteracy

Van Schaik recently published statistics showing that 60% of all SA university graduates never read a book after their last exam, 80% of families in SA do not own a single book other than the Bible. Even though 91 % of all South Africans on Facebook claim to love certain books; only 13% of the SA population will buy a book December. Why is this? One may ask, the answer to that question is that people like an easy way out and as a result a large population of our country is illiterate.  I think there is wisdom in the fact that most professions are qualified for through long and strenuous hours in the study. Books are a very effective way of conveying ideas. Not that other forms of media are not effective in communicating information but I think they should not usurp traditional methods of learning.

We are amusing ourselves to insensitivity

Even when television communicates serious issues, like the rape of a school-girl, the death of a tourist in Gugulethu, human trafficking ect. These are levelled out by KFC commercials 5 minutes later as if they are giving the reader a break from seriousness and emotion. Violence in movies desensitises to real violence, preachers feel the need to be intertwining as well because people have an average 5 minutes attention span. It seems like the only way to modify behaviour is ‘edutainment’. The danger of this is that people may perceive the very education as some form of joke and not respond accordingly. Our culture makes it hard to present big ideas without minimizing their significance. Television makes it particularly hard because of its bias toward entertainment.