
It's Not Orwell, It's Brave New World - fmihaila
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley
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tronreg
"the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this
is not a typo – is 74 hours"

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jamesmcintyre
Throughout this entire election and transition I've been wondering if Neil
Postman's son is going to remind people of his father's warning in "Amusing
Ourselves to Death". It's truly surreal that this detailed prediction I read
years ago, written two years before I was born, has been playing out in such a
spectacularly... real way. There's this feeling you get when you understand
what we're in the grips of yet you also observe and experience just how
overwhelmingly impossible it is for everyone to confront the same realizations
in order for us to course-correct and avoid what increasingly feels like an
inevitable disaster.

Neil Postman was both somewhat deterministic in his beliefs about our future
and then reluctantly optimistic when pushed. In an interview he jokingly
qualified his optimistic statement with "but remember I'm an American which
means I'm eternally optimistic". I think he was also very struck with this
feeling, that it is all so clear what is happening yet the dance continues and
to warn people, to educate, to improve things in a systemic way that'd be
sufficient enough in capacity to combat these omnipresent machinations is so
overwhelmingly difficult and complex that one feels a bit hopeless.

In that same interview he said "..to the extent that there would be a serious
conversation among Americans about these issues I think we could pull
through." (Link to end of interview:
[https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m](https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m))

Because this problem is so complex and deeply-entrenched in so many facets of
our existence whatever course-correction can be made will have to be the
result of a phenomenon which I'd describe as very much "emergent". And that
phenomenon will be an amalgamation of shifts in thought and behavior spanning
all facets of culture and society. You could say "organic movement" but I am
not even so hopeful as to think one or a few "organic" movements would
suffice. I believe the shift would have to be systemic but also cultural, only
a shift in our beliefs- in what our culture deems valuable would provide
enough motivation to re-center ourselves around a new definition of civic
duty.

Ever since I wanted to be a web developer my dream was to start a successful
startup that would allow me to then fund the development of a web technology,
likely a platform of some sort, that would help solve some of these
bewilderingly complex problems primarily rooted in education. I am always
trying to think of how a web technology could fit into the puzzle.

However, if a the American people do not start a discussion about this problem
(not one facet of the problem like "fake news" but an acknowledgement of it's
deeply-entrenched, multi-faceted nature) than we cannot give it a name and
fight it. We cannot begin to plan solutions if we do not first have most
people on board which the fact that the problem exists in the first place.

If you've read this far maybe you too are interested in this problem and maybe
a couple web developers slowly ideating and iterating over time could be a
valuable contribution? Feel free to hit me up: james.checks.his.email at gmail
dot com.

*edited to add link to interview.

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HoppedUpMenace
Isn't this article purely an opinion piece? I don't mind, but if it is, it
should be labeled as such and not passed off as investigative journalism. That
being said, you could argue that its both or any number of things, for
example:

news supression/distortion -> Orwell

class system of superiors/inferiors -> Brave New World

Could even possibly throw Citizen Kane into the mix but that may be a stretch.

~~~
norea-armozel
So Brazil minus the ducts?

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gozur88
>At Forbes, one contributor wrote that the book “may help explain the
otherwise inexplicable”.

It's only inexplicable if you live in a coastal bubble where everyone thinks
the same way you do. It can't be that your values were rejected by people you
deride in "flyover country" (and still not by a majority of the country). No,
it must be that they've been brainwashed by television!

But somehow the purveyors of this theory have remained untouched by the
corrupting influence of mass media.

~~~
pasbesoin
Other than flat panel TV's and cell phones, a lot of people in "middle
America" have gotten absolutely shit out of the last 20 - 30 years. Work's
more for less and no advancement. The future is ever more uncertain.
Healthcare's gone from expensive to unachievable. Illegal immigration has
produced considerable downward pressure on lower-end jobs as well as non-wage
benefits (illegals have no leverage with respect to benefits, and this places
additional pressure on everyone else to give up on them).

My cousin's little old farm town in the middle of Nebraska has become
significantly "hispanified." And while many of them are nice enough, a
significant fraction are not. Regardless, it has produced a very significant,
dramatic local social and cultural shift. Which many remaining voters find
quite disruptive.

Republican as well as Democratic "internationalists" turned their backs on
these potential voters and with varying forms of rhetoric about "the greater
good."

Well, there's only so much personal sacrifice people are going to put up with.

Trump... well, whatever you think about truth and falsehood with respect to
him and the people immediately around him (campaign, advisors, talking heads,
opportunists, hangers-on... oh, and his family), he gave this demographic a
message to vote for.

In the U.S., social cohesion has always been limited and reinforced
significantly through force and intimidation rather than cooperation. But, in
a politically significant while not / no longer economically and popularly
dominant demographic, it wore thin enough to engender this disruption.

The "internationalists" forgot the first rule of politics and of social
stability: To take care of your own. Well, they came to mis-identify "their
own" in terms of their personal economic benefit as opposed to the polities
they formally represented.

Having watched my own little economic sector, tech., get run over by
outsourcing and ageism, I have very little sympathy for them nor for the
economic friends they thought they were representing.

P.S. I'm no Trump supporter. I'm simply saying, neither am I surprised by
what's happened. Except, perhaps, than he actually achieved the Presidency.
The Clinton camp and the DNC can hang that one squarely around their necks.

P.P.S. I'm not particularly defending the Trump voter, either. A lot of
nastiness and short-sightedness and myopic self-interest in that camp, too.
Nonetheless, they are voters -- members of society -- and trying to quietly
flush them down the drain was not a particularly astute political strategy.

P.P.P.S. There is also another -- and perhaps the dominant -- side to Trump
support: People who believe simply that you get what you deserve. Regardless
of circumstances. They are doing ok -- well, even. And that they entirely
deserve credit for that. Anyone else? Not their problem. And if the other
person's circumstances leave them down and out: Well, they deserve that.

Some of these people: They will take and take. I experienced this personally,
this past year, trying to help one of them out of difficult straights. As
their circumstances improved -- not insignificantly through considerable dint
of effort on my part -- they became less grateful rather than more, and a
criticism of others that I thought they were initially beginning to see past,
returned in full force.

Direct kindness ultimately had no influence on their perspective _and
behavior_ \-- no matter what words and attitudes they used to initially
solicit and gain support.

And THIS really scares me, more than a bit. Or divests me somewhat more of my
own apparently mistaken ideals.

Some of these people, are simply intractable. There is no compromise with
them, no coming to a mutual understanding.

Were the "internationalists" right, simply to try to leave them behind? No --
even if they are intractable, simply ignoring them is short-sighted, in its
own fashion.

Anyway, I've glued enough P.S.'s onto this comment that reflects my continuing
struggle to find my own way through these set of personalities written
wholesale onto our current politics.

~~~
angersock
Thank you for your writeup; it was thoughtful and well-phrased.

