Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman has accurately summed up what is happening in our country today. Our brains are getting filled with unnecessary information that relates to us in no way. We hear all kinds of stories of terrible things happening like people getting killed in other states. Or countries like from the Iraq war. The majority of us are left unaffected and unconcerned by the forty-five second announcement we hear from the media friendly news announcers. Then our attention is turned to the kibbles commercial that has just interrupted the unimportant stream of information. Neil has convinced me that our country is amusing it’s self to death.
To me Postman has used logic and reason to persuade readers of what is happening in our country. How we have moved from receiving necessary information about what will affect us to being bombarded with vast amounts of irrelevance. Before television and radio news was a seldom heard item brought across the country at 35 miles per hour by train in the form of a newspaper. Now information goes from broadcasting station to satellite to your T.V. in seconds. He shows this problem constantly throughout the book bringing up analogies and metaphors. One such example is how Japanese cars are better built than American cars but they have to compete with the American car image. This is easily proven by turning to King 5 news. You find no ugly people and many irrelevant stories except maybe one item like the weather for the next couple of days. But that can always be chancy also because there are many occasions in which the weatherman is completely wrong.
In conclusion, I believe many people in our country I believe have stopped thinking. Instead irrelevance and unimportance drilled into our heads. As Postman predicted and saw in 1985 is still happening today but even more so. We have more technology, more sources of information and better ways to get it to more people. Truly we are amusing ourselves to death.