Amusing ourselves to death

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Culture in a box

Television in our culture today is like a car crash in slow motion – Most of us that know and can see what is happening(except those involved in the “car crash” which in today’s society is almost every one), but we are all seemingly powerless to stop it, or we just don’t care. In amusing ourselves to death Neil Postman is in a way foreshadowing (considering he wrote the book in 1985) and warning us about things to come. Television is taking over. And guess what! He was right. Today people get most it not all of their information from what is believed to be reliable sources, TV; however, even the most serious and informative programming is and has always been corrupted – almost nothing is taken seriously.

Neil Postman uses a lot or rhetorical devices but one of the most important ones is foreshadowing things to come by referencing the past. – Clearly history tends to repeat itself. To be a little vague, in the first half of the book Neil Postman talks about how verbal communication was first thought to be the best way to communicate, but then came typography which made it was easier to organize one’s thoughts. By referencing the past Neil is foreshadowing that soon television will take over; just how in the past epistemology was replaced by typography. To be honest as soon as I saw the book amusing ourselves to death I had already made up my mind about it and I hadn’t even read it. To me it looked like a one sided biased book written by some geeky guy that didn’t like television and I myself having grown up watching television felt it was my duty to defend it until the end. I was wrong. - Don’t judge a book by its cover. Everything he said he backed up with facts and statistics. No where in the book did I find him to be extremely biased, ok fine, maybe he was a little biased but not too much. He never said TV was a good thing or a bad thing he merely pointed out its effects on society and culture. When ever he uses a fact, statistic or quote he always lists the reference he got it from. The fact that he was unbiased in his argument made his writing a lot more effective. Another major rhetorical device I found through out the book was Hypophora. Hypophora is when you ask a question and then proceed to answer it. (pg 152-153) “Why these students studying the behavior of humpback whales? How critical is it that the “academic themes” of navigation and map-reading skills be learned?” then he proceeds to answer by saying “map-reading has never been considered an “academic theme”……”

After reading through the whole book I have come to a conclusion that I agree with what Neil is saying. What helped me decide on that was his use of rhetorical devices that really helped make his writing a lot more effective. This book has opened my eyes to how I view what’s on television not literally of course.