Amusing Ourselves to Death Analysis

When I first started to read Amusing Ourselves to Death I wondered just how much of an influence the time difference from when the book was written to now would have on how the book and its contents applied to today's society. I was extremely surprised to discover the context and time period in which this book was written is still applicable to today's society. This book has, for the most part, accurately depicted the reasons for the decline of society as a whole.

In this book Neil Postman argues the age of show business, media, television, etc. have had a negative impact on society and their discourse and as a result has led to the decline of our culture as a whole. Within the pages he presents arguments, facts, statistics, and quotes all in a clear, concise and logical manner that clearly shows the use of logos in his writing but still allows the reader to quietly ponder his arguments without being overwhelmed.

You can see such an example of logos in this passage when he states, "The average length of a shot on network television in only 3.5 seconds, so that the eyes never rests...Moreover, television offers viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification...American television, in other words, is devoted entirely to supplying its audience with entertainment (page 86)."

While the use of logos is rampant throughout the entire book other methods of rhetoric are also used. The use of similes and metaphors are very strong in statements such as, "And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors, Our metaphors create the content of our culture (page 15)." Neil Postman also uses causal analysis which examines the relationships between events or conditions and their consequences and can be seen in statements such as, "Telegraphy also made public discourse essentially incoherent. It brought into being a world of broken time and broken attention. The principal strength of the telegraph was its capacity to move information, not collect it, explain it or analyze it. In this respect, telegraphy was the exact opposite of typography (page 69)." He also uses antimetabole which is the reversing the order of repeated words or phrases to intensify the final formulation, to present alternatives, or to show contrast in statements such as, "The danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion (page 124)."

I believe this book, though written in 1985, still applies to our society today and that most of the arguments presented are valid in claims such as, "We Americans seem to know everything about the last twenty-four hours but very little of the last sixty centuries or the last sixty years." While I do not feel all of the arguments made apply to us in our world today I do believe his last statement is the most accurate and perhaps the most insightful into what our society today has become when he says, "It was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking (page 163)."