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In 1985, Neil Postman observed an America imprisoned by its own need for amusement. He was, it turns out, extremely prescient.
[...] Many Americans get their news filtered through late-night comedy and their outrages filtered through Saturday Night Live. They—we—turn to memes to express both indignation and joy.
[...] Postman today is best remembered as a critic of television: That's the medium he directly blamed, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, for what he termed Americans' "vast descent into triviality," and the technology he saw as both the cause and the outcome of a culture that privileged entertainment above all else. But Postman was a critic of more than TV alone. He mistrusted entertainment, not as a situation but as a political tool; he worried that Americans' great capacity for distraction had compromised their ability to think, and to want, for themselves. He resented the tyranny of the lol. His great observation, and his great warning, was a newly relevant kind of bummer: There are dangers that can come with having too much fun.
In 1984, Americans took a look around at the world they had created for themselves and breathed a collective sigh of relief. The year George Orwell had appointed as the locus of his dark and only lightly fictionalized predictions—war, governmental manipulation, surveillance not just of actions, but of thoughts themselves—had brought with it, in reality, only the gentlest of dystopias. Sure, there was corporatism. Sure, there was communism. And yet, for most of the Americans living through that heady decade, 1984 had not, for all practical purposes, become Nineteen Eighty-Four. They surveyed themselves, and they congratulated themselves: They had escaped.
Or perhaps they hadn't. Postman opened Amusing Ourselves to Death with a nod to the year that had preceded it. He talked about the freedoms enjoyed by the Americans of 1984—cultural, commercial, political. And then he broke the bad news: They'd been measuring themselves according to the wrong dystopia. It wasn't Nineteen Eighty-Four that had the most to say about the America of the 1980s, but rather Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. "In Huxley's vision," Postman noted, "no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity, and history." Instead: "People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think."
The vehicle of their oppression, in this case? Yep, the television. Which had, Postman argued, thoroughly insinuated itself on all elements of American life—and not just in the boob-tubed, couch-potatoed, the-average-American-watches-five-hours-of-television-a-day kind of way that is so familiar in anti-TV invectives, but in a way that was decidedly more intimate.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/04/are-we-having-too-much-fun/523143/
Are we having tooooo much fun ?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:38PM (26 children)
Otherwise this becomes another rant that the world isn't perfect. I think we all have that already figured out.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:43PM (15 children)
In response to your question: doing something to bring this world one little step closer to perfection?
(I don't know, like taking out a piece of EPA... or putting it back, or whatever. Endless fun, I tell yea)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:57PM (11 children)
Sometimes, we should really listen to Aristotle, The Philosopher.
Pleasant amusements also are thought to be of this nature; we choose
them not for the sake of other things; for we are injured rather than
benefited by them, since we are led to neglect our bodies and our
property. But most of the people who are deemed happy take refuge
in such pastimes, which is the reason why those who are ready-witted
at them are highly esteemed at the courts of tyrants; they make themselves
pleasant companions in the tyrants' favourite pursuits, and that is
the sort of man they want. Now these things are thought to be of the
nature of happiness because people in despotic positions spend their
leisure in them, but perhaps such people prove nothing; for virtue
and reason, from which good activities flow, do not depend on despotic
position; nor, if these people, who have never tasted pure and generous
pleasure, take refuge in the bodily pleasures, should these for that
reason be thought more desirable; for boys, too, think the things
that are valued among themselves are the best. It is to be expected,
then, that, as different things seem valuable to boys and to men,
so they should to bad men and to good. Now, as we have often maintained,
those things are both valuable and pleasant which are such to the
good man; and to each man the activity in accordance with his own
disposition is most desirable, and, therefore, to the good man that
which is in accordance with virtue. Happiness, therefore, does not
lie in amusement; it would, indeed, be strange if the end were amusement,
and one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in
order to amuse oneself. For, in a word, everything that we choose
we choose for the sake of something else-except happiness, which is
an end. Now to exert oneself and work for the sake of amusement seems
silly and utterly childish. But to amuse oneself in order that one
may exert oneself, as Anacharsis puts it, seems right; for amusement
is a sort of relaxation, and we need relaxation because we cannot
work continuously. Relaxation, then, is not an end; for it is taken
for the sake of activity.
[emphasis added.]
Now GET back to Work!!!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday April 30 2017, @09:26PM
I will, magister, I will... only it will happen next Saturday.
Right now, I'm about to leave for office... to amuse myself (a well deserved relaxation after the past intense working weekend) and earn some money in the process; all of this without making myself better for 5 days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:03PM (4 children)
We don't have to choose between amusement as a goal or work as a goal. We can have both. It's called a balanced life.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:20PM (3 children)
No, it is not a balance, Aristotle says we amuse ourselves in order to relax, so that we might to great and virtuous things. All play and no work makes Jack a boy. Did you even read the text?
παίζειν δ᾽ ὅπως σπουδάζῃ, κατ᾽ Ἀνάχαρσιν, ὀρθῶς ἔχειν δοκεῖ: ἀναπαύσει γὰρ ἔοικεν ἡ παιδιά, ἀδυνατοῦντες δὲ συνεχῶς πονεῖν ἀναπαύσεως δέονται. οὐ δὴ τέλος ἡ ἀνάπαυσις:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:44PM (2 children)
so that we might [aspire] to great and virtuous things. All play and no work makes Jack a [dull] boy
Slow down, you old fart.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday April 30 2017, @11:36PM (1 child)
Thanks for the edits, gweg. But the second one is not correct. "All play and no work makes Jack a boy" is an intentional reversal of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Aristotle's point is that having entertainment as a goal is childish. And I love how the strikeout tag doesn't work in the comment title, but does show up in the title in the message!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 02 2017, @12:39AM
Well, I for one am all for titles etc. to be interpreted in as <pre>-wrapped, '&', '<' etc. thereby getting passed as typed. It's convenient. And as a site luser, I don't really want html being injected into article titles kthx?
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Monday May 01 2017, @08:23AM (4 children)
I love Aristotle's take on it.
I find myself happiest when I am working... but on MY stuff.
I can get interested in someone else's stuff, but they usually douse my enthusiasm quite quickly using proven managerial methods of micromanaging me.
Probably the most effective means of turning the joy of work into misery is having to be subordinate to someone I have no respect for.
Then the whole workplace experience degrades to yet another cappuchin monkey, cucumber, and grape demonstration.
You an engineer? You create content. Will you work for $25/hour? Oh him? Lawyer. He protects the content. $600/hour! Oh, me? Manager. I find guys who will produce content for $25/hour. I get paid $200K/yr salary for my leadership and people handling skill. You mad, bro?
I'd rather be working on my designs than damn near anything else, until I either get too hungry, too sleepy, or have to go take a crap.
But that corporate cappuchin monkey thing has me so frustrated that I don't even try anymore to appease that type. Just a bunch of tie-guys trying to pass off least-effort attempts to investment groups.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday May 01 2017, @08:57AM (3 children)
Of course that is the point. For most wage-slaves, a job is only a way to pay for amusement. It makes not sense otherwise. But this is the point. A real job is something you do because it is worth doing, of itself, not a means to make money so you can afford a Blizzard Account. (Oh, too close?). So there is a difference between a job as a means, and a job as an end-in-itself, and I hope everyone will be able to find their calling, that job they want to do, not one they have to do, so they can find happiness in the end. Nothing is so pathetic as working very hard so you can stop working (retire), and then just wait to die. What a meaningless existence. Kind of like being a Real Estate Developer in New York, and at the end realizing you were just charging people more than you should because you could. And then running for President on a whim!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Monday May 01 2017, @10:00AM (2 children)
I guess I was one who got out of having to play the part of a monkey for an organ-grinder. I hated dressing up in suit and tie, and having to watch what I told the customers.
That is, if the customers ever saw me.
Yes, I would like to leave something of me behind. Hopefully, if its good enough, it will grow.
One thing I can say is that the stuff I have been economically forced to make wasn't all that good. Cheapened to the point that I certainly would not buy it. Anyone seeing something made in the last 20 years or so know exactly what I mean. There is some good stuff out there, but most big businesses want to get the new,shiny out there even if its buggy as hell.
I just want to do it right. Even if it does take longer. I want to do it the way I would build it if I were making it to last forever.
I had a PC made that way. It worked perfectly from the day it was made to the day I finally let it go from sheer obsolescence. Same with my old Western Electric 500 series telephone. Made to last.
No, I never owned a gaming system. Some of my friends had them. I would watch them play it for hours on end... but, like watching sports on television, I simply found no enjoyment in it. I have a whole mess of games that came with the PC I am typing this on. Never have played a one of 'em. I was much more interested in LTSpice and Eagle.
I will readily admit I probably spend way too much time on these computer forums. I am here, was at The Oil Drum, and recently joined a couple of diesel truck forums.
But mainly to have access to other people like me. I find their stories and posts far more interesting than that endless stream of drivel coming from most sources - including those venues which use sound tracks to cue me into what I am supposed to laugh at, even though I found nothing amusing in it. I hardly find tolerating a bunch of smoking drunks at a nightclub my cup of tea. Nor the affection of the attendant whores there. That's not something I would want to bring home and wake up to tomorrow.
I am probably autistic. Asperger. Have not been tested, but even if some doctor identifies me as such, its not gonna change what I like to do.
Eventually, if things work out for me, I want to go to the middle of nowhere in some remote area and build a small city with some people like myself, make, and sell these things, as well as custom designs built around them. I mean somewhere where I can go enjoy nature for a while when I need to think about things... and have that same lifestyle for those I work with. New Mexico, Arizona, Maybe Texas, Arkansas, Rockies or Smokies. Somewhere out of this damned pressure cooker pot of regulation, traffic, and extreme real estate pricing. If I am flustered and wanna go fish - so be it. And I want the same for anyone working with me on this. I do not need to be number one. I just want to enjoy what life is left in me with friends who enjoy the same kind of thing. And get away from those who make life miserable.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
Have you visited Arcosanti? https://arcosanti.org/ [arcosanti.org]
I've been there twice, in the early 80s and around 2000. The growth in 15+ years was well thought out. By now they might be open to adding in some new business activities in addition to casting bells, and visitors that pay to stay there for a period. Too much sun and too hot for my taste (I'm redheaded, sunburn in minutes), but an interesting intentional community that has survived.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday May 02 2017, @05:57AM
That is an interesting link. Thanks!
They noted no air conditioning. That is probably one of the first things I would want to work on. If I can get some solar panels, some compressors, propane, and heat exchangers, I'd have an ice-bank running. That looks like a really hot area. Hope they have access to water.
I wonder why they are going conventional above ground housing? For something experimental like this... I am wondering subterranean.
They are now on my "visit list" when I get my van all updated and ready for road trip.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:15PM (2 children)
In response to your question: doing something to bring this world one little step closer to perfection?
Why assume that would happen or that entertainment doesn't help?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @12:33PM (1 child)
Read this [soylentnews.org] (I hate to be redundundandant - grin)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 04 2017, @03:45PM
For example, there is a huge amount of game playing among animal species. I believe this actually has evolutionary advantage since it allows animals, including us, a chance to simulate various sorts of activities when we're not in life-threatening danger. This manifests in such serious human activities as drills, where important activities are attempted under safe, controlled situations, but intended to simulate closely an activity under considerable danger.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 30 2017, @09:57PM (8 children)
Easy answer. Get bored, crack a book. For chronic boredom, get a job. If the job itself contributes to boredom, start another career. If you're half as smart as you think you are, and you can't cure your boredom, work on your education. In short, do something useful. Take up a hobby, like gardening, or animal breeding. Or auto repair, or remodeling. Or, maybe even do some charitable work.
I wonder how many of us here spend hours each week in front of a screen. And, how many hours. Presuming that most of us here have IQ's over 100, do you never get the feeling that you've totally wasted those hours, laughing at inane bullshit? Comedies that are so flat, that the producer has to supply canned laughter to cue the audience that it's time to laugh? And movies that are so absurd that we have coined the phrase "suspended disbelief". I recall a scene with Rambo walking along firing everything and everyone up with TWO freaking machine guns. FFS, you won't find very many people capable of holding a machine gun and firing it, let alone two. Ask our Mighty Buzzard - I understand that he was required to tote a machine gun around while in service.
Television rots your mind, and Neil Postman understood that. Today's internet is probably just as bad for most people. Windows 10 helps to demonstrate that.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @11:54PM (5 children)
For chronic boredom, get a job.
Boomer asshole detected. No, motherfucker, you get a fucking job, you smug piece of shit. Times have changed since you were young and stupid, you old moron. You can't just "get" a job anymore. The way the job market works today, you don't get the job unless you already have the job. That's right, the exact job you applied for, you need to be doing it already, at the exact same place you applied. This is what stupid fuckers like you fail to understand is called a Catch-22 situation. Human resources departments everywhere know very well the fact that eludes your stupid asshole brain, which is that jobs don't need people anymore. Now, you, die as soon as possible, senile old coot. Fuck you to hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2017, @01:17AM (3 children)
Boomer asshole detected. No, motherfucker, you get a fucking job, you smug piece of shit. Times have changed since you were young and stupid, you old moron. You can't just "get" a job anymore. The way the job market works today, you don't get the job unless you already have the job. That's right, the exact job you applied for, you need to be doing it already, at the exact same place you applied. This is what stupid fuckers like you fail to understand is called a Catch-22 situation. Human resources departments everywhere know very well the fact that eludes your stupid asshole brain, which is that jobs don't need people anymore. Now, you, die as soon as possible, senile old coot. Fuck you to hell.
Don't hold back. Tell us how you *really* feel.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2017, @05:02AM (1 child)
U+1F3BB
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 01 2017, @08:32AM
That's one way to spell "fuck you, got mine!"
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday May 01 2017, @10:35AM
I think he just did.
Ok, given I am now well into retirement age, I look back and see how fortunate I was to be able to have a decent paying job ( i.e. businesses wanted my expertise enough to pay me pretty well for working for them ) compared to what I see today, with way too many STEM graduates vying for a small fraction of the jobs which were available when I was coming through.
I think the guy's spot-on with his frustration with finding a job. I tried too, with all the experience I had when I was laid off from aerospace. His story is the same as mine. We simply don't do that ( in my case, electronic design ) in USA anymore. Even my trade mags have ceased to exist.
I am of the strong impression that if I am ever to work again in the thing I love to do, I will have to create my own job.
The only old farts anyone wants are the old farts who know someone else who has the power to spend yet someone else's money... i.e. knows a Congressman.
Who gives a damn about control system theory? Just buy a smart controller and be done with it - just press the "autoset" button. You spend all this money getting educated on the "modern" languages, and they are out of date by the time you have completed all the requirements for a degree. I may know how to design nearly any interface imaginable, but you can also find those interfaces somewhere on the internet, so why hire me to build one?
I've come far short of regaining meaningful employment since layoff.
I can only imagine the problems younger people having far less experience than I are having.
Their prime strength is they are likely more enthusiastic ( well, I was before I experienced the ignominy of being micromanaged ), and are more likely to accept a job for peanuts.
Their prime weakness is their inexperience will lead them to repeat the same things I found out when I spent way too much time pursuing "gusts of wind".
I believe a lot of us here know that years of experience have a tendency to form pretty well-tuned bullshit detectors.
While modern business methods seem to have gravitated more toward salesmanship ( artful lying to investors ) rather than production of robust product.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 01 2017, @04:29AM
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Monday May 01 2017, @01:20AM (1 child)
Next poll question then?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 01 2017, @04:56AM
Sure - go with it. I suppose that honesty requires me to admit that I sit in front of a "screen" for several hours per week. But, my screens are interactive. So, we'll need a couple choices for computers - one for entertainment, another for "other".
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:39PM
not just assert that current entertainment doesn't seem very productive and think that is a problem somehow.
I'm not sure that's what TFA is saying at all. It's actually pretty unclear what the overall point of the article is, other than a meditation on Neil Postman's book from the 1980s and how it was "prescient" in various ways. The author of TFA seems to go back and forth between agreeing the Postman's critique of American culture, claiming that he "over-romanticized" historical aspects of the pre-television era, and just making random connections with things that have happened since the 1980s. I don't sense an overall argument that entertainment is bad (though Postman certainly thought so). The only general argument seemingly made here is that the particular brand of media and entertainment is "distinctly American" in some ways. The conclusion to the article is just bizarre, drawing on Brian Williams calling images of missiles "beautiful pictures," though people have found "beauty" in much more horrible things for generations.
And frankly, the closer I read TFA, the more oversimplifying I see. There's this extended section (based on Postman) about how the telegraph changed American life. But most of the nefarious things it supposedly brought existed before -- "yellow journalism" wasn't an invention of the telegraph, and newspapers had already been creating "entertaining" news for centuries by that point.
The author's historical claims are no better:
Still, Postman understood what might come, because he understood what had been. He saw the systems of things. In one way he couldn’t have imagined the world of 2017, one in which television, still, defines so much of American life.
Really? He had already lived though a few decades of television and saw it only expand its power.
He couldn’t have anticipated Samantha Bee or John Oliver or Seth Meyers or Stephen Colbert—he couldn’t have known how comedians would come to double, in a culture saturated with information, as journalists.
Many comedians had been political in the past, though they didn't tend to have talk shows. Editorial cartoons had been around for centuries. Talk-show monologues often gave pointed political commentary. SNL's "Weekend Update" had already been around for a decade before Postman's book. Heck, the 1980s was a golden age for Doonesbury. Was this "journalism" or merely satire? I don't know, but comedians and satirists had been giving novel spins on current events for centuries, some doing more "research" than others.
He couldn’t have known that celebrities would be regularly asked to weigh in on the political conversations of the day
Now I know something's off here. Does the author not remember McCarthyism and how Hollywood actors were frequently attacked because of their open political beliefs? Celebrities have been involved in politics ever since there were modern "celebrities." Heck, P.T. Barnum was elected to the Connecticut legislature in the 1800s. Beyond speaking out directly, celebrities used their art forms: Who can forget Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator? And by 1985 and Postman's book, you had prominent celebrities even joining the ranks of politics -- George Murphy as U.S. senator, Shirley Temple as an ambassador, and obviously Reagan was president. Celebrities as a group are probably more politically outspoken than in the past, but this was hardly novel in 1985.
Many of these trends have shifted or grew in unpredictable ways, but humans have sought entertainment ever since there were humans. Informed political satire is at least as old as ancient Greece and Rome. "Bread and circuses" have kept the populace entertained for millennia. Obviously the forms of entertainment have changed, and today many people have more "free time" to consume entertainment than in the past, but I don't think the overall roles of entertainment are as novel as TFA claims.