Trump, Postman, Orwell and Huxley

In the introduction to Neil Postman’s classic “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” the author draws several distinctions between the dystopia of George Orwell in “1984” and that of Aldous Huxley in “Brave New World.”

As Postman described it, Orwell’s vision was of an oppressive dictatorial mind control that “flipped” human values. Vis. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”

Huxley, on the other hand, described a world in which we ourselves choose to escape through drug-induced fantasies. “…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.”

On the status of truth, Postman wrote: “Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

There’s more that Postman contrasted and it’s well worth reading, but at the end of his introduction, he concluded: “This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

Looking at the 2016 election and the on-going Trumpian transition to power, I conclude that both Huxley and Orwell were right…but there is much, much more going on.

Certainly Orwell’s fear of truth being concealed from us is true and has been throughout our history. But, likewise, as Huxley predicted, truth has become “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Indeed truth itself seems irrelevant, not because it is concealed, but because what passes as truth is fabricated and, even after being unmasked, still manages to retain its power.

So we have “fake news.” We are dizzily forced to tease reality from “reality.” Fact from fiction. If we have the time or inclination for it….

The consequences are clear and dangerous beyond the results of the election.

Yesterday’s news of the armed “self-investigator” set upon threatening a pizza parlor is a case in point. The pizza establishment had been falsely portrayed by trolls as being at the center of child sex ring operated by none other than Hillary Clinton. The gunman bought the lie.

Such rampant lies result from financial as well as political incentives.

Witness the entertainment business. Entertainment, much of it violent and outlandish, is richly rewarding. That has been true for decades, but, amplified by new technologies, it has escalated in brutality.

Society and civility are far the worse for it.

And so we have the president of CBS, Les Moonves, confessing during Trump’s profane, violence-prompting, news cycle-grabbing campaign. "It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Solitary trolls have made small fortunes concocting “fake news” (ie. lies) to attract internet “clicks” and hence money on Facebook and other sites.

In such an amoral environment, lying overwhelms truth in the marketplace of “ideas.”

Just as “truth will set us free,” today’s rewards for lying have doomed us to enslavement.

So who was right? Huxley or Orwell?

While I wouldn’t wish our predicament upon Postman (who died in 2003), Orwell or Huxley, I yearn to put the question to them.

Manning and Snowden; Huxley and Orwell

The Bradley Manning decision got me thinking about the late Neil Postman's conclusion at the end of his introduction to the insightful "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

He argued that Aldous Huxley's entertainment-anesthetized "Brave New World" better describes our plight than does George Orwell's totalitarian "1984."

Until recently, I would have largely agreed. Through our addictions to television, Twitter, Facebook, on-line games, broadcast sports and the internet generally, we have been "amusing ourselves to death." We are willingly living in a fabricated media environment manipulated by corporate interests. We define ourselves through purchases.

We have turned our backs on a world we might otherwise be able to influence.

Its problems are infamously daunting: inequality, poverty, war, global warming, fanaticism, sexual slavery, overpopulation, starvation, ignorance etc.

Now, the revelations of Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and others prove that Orwell's Big Brother is tracking each and everyone of us as we play in our technological sandboxes.

Moreover, our ersatz democracy is performing crimes against humanity — all in the name of freedom and "The American Way."

Understandably Big Bro (collectively the Obama administration, the military and the "intelligence" community) desperately wants to keep secret both its atrocities and its surveillance.

So Manning and Snowden are vilified. They are tried both in the corporate press and in fact. Manning faces spending the rest of his life in prison; Snowden is being pursued like a traitor on the run.

So there's a meld of Orwell and Huxley in all of this. Informed of our government's Orwellian atrocities, will we simply behave as Huxley predicts — by flipping the channel or clicking to another web site?

Will we be too distracted to care?

Will the government be monitoring our complacency and apathy? If we alter our compliant behavior and become engaged, will Big Brother's computer detect it and take note? (Are the computers reading these words? Has your own readership been noted?)

Will we find ourselves on a "Watch List"? What next?

For a graphic, literally and figuratively, portrayal of the Postman comparisons go HERE. The cartoon strip is by Stuart McMillen. Two panels are shown above.

Stepping out with Neil Postman

I’ve been “reading” Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” I put “reading” in quotes because I’m really being read to — by an audio book “edition.”

I fear, given Postman’s passion for the printed word, that he would have looked down on my being read to. In audio form, his words march inexorably on, offering no opportunity to stop, ponder, re-read, check sources, etc.

So be it. I’ve chosen an Audio Book “edition” of Postman’s indictment of television because it can accompany me on my 10,000-Step hikes. That way I can exercise body and mind at the same time.

Postman is a great workout. Lucid, provocative, glib and insightful.

The introduction to “Amusing Ourselves to Death” offers an example. Here is Postman contrasting the worlds of Orwell’s “1984” and Huxley’s “Brave New World,” and declaring Huxley’s futuristic vision frighteningly close to what we have in the Television (and, I might add, Computer) Age.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban books for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we could become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy… In short Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us … This book (“Amusing Ourselves to Death”) is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.”

As I hike around the neighborhood, iPod buds stuffed in my ears, I’m certain that I am closer to Huxley’s zoned out, somnambulant world. But when I think about the perversions and atrocities of the Bush Administration, its torture chambers, its manipulations of the language, its Big Brother eavesdropping intrusions into our private lives, I’m not so sure.

We may have one foot in 1984 and the other in Brave New World. And we are sinking fast.

Postman, who died in 2003, would no doubt have been pleased that I am here writing, pondering and trying to bring my own understanding to his premise.

If an Audio Book of “Amusing Ourselves to Death” delivered me this point, it’s all to the good.

Someone Please Explain ....

Al Gore’s book, “The Assault on Reason,” is something of a hymn to media literacy, even though he never says so in those words.

A core argument in his book is that television has utterly debased political discourse in America. Emotion, particularly raw fear, has utterly expelled reason in what the nation’s founders always assumed would be the free and open marketplace of ideas.

Now the marketplace has been decimated a societal suicide bomb of irrational shrapnel and mayhem. (Those are my overheated words, not Gore’s.)

Gore was defeated 5 votes to 4 — by a partisan Supreme Court. That he won the people’s vote may be the best counter-argument to his fears. But that was before 9/11 and the unraveling we have seen since.

Now for the strange parts in Gore’s media literacy riff.

Gore repeats the widely cited statistic that the average American watches 4 hours and 35 minutes of TV a day. That’s always been a frightening figure. I like to point out that it amounts to something like 17 solid years of the average person’s life.

But Gore puts it in a new context. “When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep, and couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat, and commute, [time devoted to TV] is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average America has. Younger Americans, on average, spend even more time watching TV.”

We are, in short, numbing ourselves in our “off-hours.” Aldous Huxley and “Brave New World” were closer to the truth than George Orwell and “1984.” Both are well worth rereading, and not just for their contrasting visions of the future.

Gore adds this bizarre and new (to me at least) finding, and the one I desperately need some help with:

“…the majority of Internet users report that they watch television — at least some of the time — while they use the Internet. Sixty percent of those who use both media simultaneously report that they regularly have the television on while they are using the internet. Studies show not only a continued increase in the average time Americans spend watching television each day but also an increase in the average time spent by Internet users watching the television while they use the Internet.”

I don’t get it.

Is this some weird multi-tasking, or multi-zoning out? Talk about a best-case scenario for attention-deficit disorder.

I’ve heard of folks who keep the TV on all the time to “keep them company” (whatever happened to the joys of solitude?) but why would you want the tube on while you are on the internet? Perhaps it’s a security blanket for the freedom offered by the internet’s welcoming invitation to inter-action. Even as we respond, we must be immersed in the babblings of an unquestionable source (TV), however questionable it might be.

I highly recommend Gore’s book, which serves as prima facie evidence that he still should be president. A Gandhi excepted, Gore is about as un-Bush-like a leader as one could hope for.

Let us count the ways….