Author Topic: Amusing Ourselves to Death  (Read 556 times)

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Nation of One

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Amusing Ourselves to Death
« on: February 02, 2017, 12:01:09 pm »
Library Genesis has Neil Portman's 2005 20th anniversary edition of c.1985 "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business"

I think even "mainstream Amerika" and "First World India" would find this relevant today.   I realize that the Third World exists side by side with the First World, and that, as Holden has suggested, when a great deal of the population is struggling to get a fist-full of flour, they will hardly have any inclination to discuss much of anything else until they have bread in their belly or basket.

I am sure Raul must witness this in South America as well.  I am grateful for having access to food and shelter (for this period of my life), and I never want to come off sounding like I forget there are others in severe distress who don't have the inclination to study anything whatsoever.

I understand that one almost feels grotesque discussing the differences between dystopias and wondering which novel best describes the dystopia one is currently living in.  There is this sense of privilege or guilt by association.  I am a parasite living off the Machinery of Industrial Society.  My apologies ...

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What happens when media and politics become forms of entertainment? In the season of Trump and Hillary, Neil's Postman's essential guide to the modern media is more relevant than ever.

Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of  entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.

In his foreword, Postman compared Orwell’s vision of fascist repression with the trivial, substanceless society envisioned by Aldous Huxley in his 1932 novel “Brave New World.”

In Huxley’s vision, Postman wrote, “no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. … Orwell feared that truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

I remember someone who called himself Trachycarpus who would post regularly on my old message board mentioning this difference as well.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2017, 01:09:06 pm by 2deep »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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TrachycarpusAgain

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Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2017, 09:36:32 pm »
Can't even tell if my posts are going through.  I could just try to make a new account. 

Nation of One

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Re: Amusing Ourselves to Death
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2017, 10:33:11 pm »
I'm seeing this post.   I have it set so guests can comment.

How have you been Trachycarpus?

By the way, I think this might be a good opportunity to explain that back in 2008-2013, or whenever that old message board was created, the first four letters of the website were entirely a bizarre coincidence.

I had taken the term, "Isis", from the name of a goddess, and there was never any mention back then of the Islamic State being referred to by that acronym. 

I just figured I would clear that up, in case anyone noticed.

It was just a funny coincidence.  I'm not religious at all.  Besides that, I am heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, who referred to the Qu'ran and one of the most wretch books.  :-[ ::)

 “Consider the Koran, for example; this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical needs of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.”


Anyway, do you remember your reference to something about how our situation resembles Huxley's vision as opposed to Orwell's? 

PS:  Brave New World Revisited
« Last Edit: March 06, 2017, 11:17:49 pm by Phantasmagoria »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Silenus

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« Reply #3 on: August 28, 2019, 05:27:06 am »
"The dictatorial mouths everywhere are met at present by the innumerable addicts of alcohol - from the monotony of daily tasks - , the myriad repressed, all smothered in an immense sado-masochist narcissim, all deriving from researches, experiments and social sincerity. People talk to me too much about youth, the evil is deeper than youth! In fact, I see in youth only a mobilisation of desires for apéritifs, sports, automobiles and shows, nothing new. The young, at least as regards ideas, for the most part lag behind the gossiping, money-grubbing, homicidal R.A.T.s In this context, to remain fair, let us note that the youth does not exist in the Romantic sense that we still lend to this word. From the age of ten the destiny of man seems quite fixed in its emotive sources; after this period we exist only through insipid, increasingly less sincere and more theatrical repetitions. Perhaps, after all, the “civilisations” will suffer the same fate? Ours seems to be quite concentrated in an incurable militant psychosis. We live only for this sort of destructive repetitions. When we observe from what rancid prejudices, what rotten nonsense the absolute fanaticism of millions of so-called evolved individuals, instructed in the best schools of Europe, can be nourished we are certainly authorised to ask ourselves if the instinct of death in man, in his societies, does not already definitively dominate the instinct of life. German, French, Chinese, Wallachian. Dictatorships or not. Nothing but pretexts to keep playing, to the death.

I would like to explain everything through the malign defensive reactions of capitalism or extreme misery. But things are not so simple or as significant. Neither profound misery nor police oppression justifies these mass rushes towards extreme, aggressive, ecstatic nationalisms of entire countries. One can certainly explain things in this manner to the faithful who are already quite convinced in advance, the same people to whom was explained twelve months ago the imminent, unmistakable arrival of Communism in Germany. But the taste for wars and massacres could not have for its essential source the appetite for conquest, power and benefits of the ruling classes. Everything has been said, exposed, in this matter without anybody having been disgusted. The present unanimous sadism proceeds above all from a desire for nothingness profoundly installed in man, and especially in the masses, a sort of almost irresistible amorous unanimous impatience for death. With coquetry of course, and a thousand denials, but the tropism is there, and so much more powerful in that it is perfectly secret and silent."

"And the strict master Death bids them dance."