Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves To Death is the kind of book I thought of myself as having read even though I hadn’t. Until yesterday, that is, when I finally read it. Ironically it proved to be exactly what I assumed it was (from reviews, mentions in articles, people’s references here and there, the whole zeitgeist, I guess), that being an insightful, though slightly over-the-top, attack on what passes for culture in modern America.
I can’t honestly say I found any of the ideas illuminating since they seemed so obvious. But I was pleased to come across a forceful paragraph or two on the perils of reducing education to entertainment. Not that what Postman wrote back in 1985 has made any difference to that process. Mind you, nothing I’ve said has made any difference either, so there you are. Great minds ignored alike.
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