You made me think in this, and previous article of his protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra flying… he loathes the masses gorging themselves on rubbish low brow books. “Anything with a muuuurder”
Perhaps literacy looks more like a higher level pursuit as the consumers of early pulp fiction migrated to TV?
What is particularly sad is that even in 1985, Postman still lived at a time when news had a professional tone rather than much of the "infotainment" today, the likes of which was largely confined to the 1976 satirical film Network:
· I tend to be mostly pessimistic about human nature, not unlike the enlightened Ibn Khaldun (civilizations have a way of destroying themselves) or the great Hobbes.
· But human beings also have a remarkable capacity to adapt, exchange ideas and flourish! Just look at me: an Arab from Dubai interacting with the great English writer Ed West 😊 — one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right! By non-biased, I mean not intending on hating peoples like me :(
· But the destruction of reading, the demolition of our inner lives, the end of spending long nights buried in the pages of great, demanding books — exploring and questioning the sacred cows of religion and politics (I fear this will largely be the result of Western civilization’s obsession with technological progress. Thank you very much.)
· I want to remain in the past, yes — not caring much about AI, social media, or the dreams of the evil Silicon Valley. The past feels more humane, slower and classier — for all its ugliness.
The first sentence of your last paragraph contains a grammatical error: “Postman deliberately avoided MAKE the argument …” I believe you meant use the present participle of the verb “make,” i.e., “making.” If I were you, I would blame this oversight on television. :-)
I liked the scene in Family Guy where Brian the dog is trying to impress a woman at a club, who is busily scrolling her phone, by claiming he wrote a book. When she asks what a book is, he explains, 'It's like a really long magazine . . . it's like the internet made out of a tree.'
"Britain, in particular, became a great exporter of trash television that was often notably cruel as well as coarse; I suspect that the Great Awokening, and its turn towards an incoherent new puritanism, was a reaction to this era."
Certainly in a frightening world where those who are immersed in "postmodernist" writings are among the select literate group who go to higher education and the rest of the population are the post-literate TV watchers:
"We are never bored, even when confined to our homes during the 2020 lockdown, when most people were able to access an almost infinite number of films and television shows to pass the time; had the pandemic taken place when I was growing up, the choice would have been between Hale and Pale or Watchdog or, dare I say it, a book. Imagine if we only had the Bible to entertain us?"
Had the pandemic occurred in most if not all of the 20th Century, it have been seen as an absurdity and practical impossibility send and entire planet to their homes for months for the sake of a disease that mostly just killed older people and a small percentage of them at that. There would be little practical ways to stay in communication and keep the vital machines running without going outside regularly.
"In 1690 came America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, established in Boston by one Benjamin Harris, whose previous scoops back in England included exposing a non-existent conspiracy by Catholics to burn down London for his paper Domestick Intelligence, which gives some indication of the tone. "
The dropping of the "k" from the ends of words like "Publick", "Musick", and "Magick" was a curious innovation of Noah Webster that actually spread to both sides of the Atlantic unlike so many other examples of "American spelling" invented by him.
"Television was one of the most quickly adopted technologies in history. Its impact was revolutionary in cultural, social and political terms. It also had a quite immediate impact on the number of hours people spent reading, so ending the supremacy of this medium after centuries."
I would add that George Orwell famously conceived of a dystopian world with ubiquitous "telescreens" in the 1940s even though the medium was just getting off the ground.
With the best will in the world to our American cousins, 'the Republic' was founded by slave drivers, defaulters on British debt, criminals and smugglers and given an intellectual gloss by malcontented lawyers.
The 'Enlightenment' was full of such pious frauds.
Yes, there is a grain of truth in your cynical (and hopefully tongue in cheek) comment. But while the founders of the American republic were not saints, they were mostly incredibly brave, driven and often brilliant men. The more history I read, the more miraculous the whole thing seems to me.
With all goodwill to American friends (and family) I can't personally bring myself to sympathise with the American Rebellion nor to accept the high-sounding subsequent justifications advanced on its behalf. I think it was a mistake and a crime.
That said, there was something undoubtedly miraculous to it.
Lecky's description of the camp at Valley Forge (December 1777) is memorable to that effect - when you consider what the republic has become:
"...The time was, indeed, well fitted to winnow the chaff from the grain; and few braver and truer men were ever collected around a great commander than those who remained with Washington during that dreary winter in Valley Forge, some twenty miles from Philadelphia. ‘For some days past,’ wrote their commander on February 16, 1778, ‘there has been little less than a famine in the camp; a part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been ere this excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and dispersion. Strong symptoms, however, of discontent have appeared in particular instances, and nothing but the most active efforts everywhere, can long avert so shocking a catastrophe.’
Many, indeed, fell away. ‘No day, nor scarce an hour passes,’ wrote Washington in December, ‘without the offer of a resigned commission.'
Many fled to the country and to their friends, and not less than 3,000 deserters came from the American camp to the British army at Philadelphia"
A History of England in the Eighteenth Century Vol. IV
While we are on the subject of The Simpsons and reading, here is a quite amusing set of dialogue from one episode:
"Carl: Let's make litter outta these literati!
Lenny: That's too clever. You're one of them!
— The Simpsons S10E22 "They Saved Lisa's Brain""
Sorry, no time to read this. Slow Horses, Season 6 has its US debut today!
You bring up Orwell here…
You made me think in this, and previous article of his protagonist in Keep the Aspidistra flying… he loathes the masses gorging themselves on rubbish low brow books. “Anything with a muuuurder”
Perhaps literacy looks more like a higher level pursuit as the consumers of early pulp fiction migrated to TV?
What is particularly sad is that even in 1985, Postman still lived at a time when news had a professional tone rather than much of the "infotainment" today, the likes of which was largely confined to the 1976 satirical film Network:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0LLyVNOWmPc&pp=ygUYTmV0d29yayAxOTc2IG1hZCBwcm9waGV0
· I tend to be mostly pessimistic about human nature, not unlike the enlightened Ibn Khaldun (civilizations have a way of destroying themselves) or the great Hobbes.
· But human beings also have a remarkable capacity to adapt, exchange ideas and flourish! Just look at me: an Arab from Dubai interacting with the great English writer Ed West 😊 — one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right! By non-biased, I mean not intending on hating peoples like me :(
· But the destruction of reading, the demolition of our inner lives, the end of spending long nights buried in the pages of great, demanding books — exploring and questioning the sacred cows of religion and politics (I fear this will largely be the result of Western civilization’s obsession with technological progress. Thank you very much.)
· I want to remain in the past, yes — not caring much about AI, social media, or the dreams of the evil Silicon Valley. The past feels more humane, slower and classier — for all its ugliness.
'one of the few non-biased writers on the Anglo-Saxon Right!'
I'm fairly sure Ed's mum is Irish.
I don’t usually look into a writer’s family origins before reading him, thank you very much 😂
The first sentence of your last paragraph contains a grammatical error: “Postman deliberately avoided MAKE the argument …” I believe you meant use the present participle of the verb “make,” i.e., “making.” If I were you, I would blame this oversight on television. :-)
I liked the scene in Family Guy where Brian the dog is trying to impress a woman at a club, who is busily scrolling her phone, by claiming he wrote a book. When she asks what a book is, he explains, 'It's like a really long magazine . . . it's like the internet made out of a tree.'
"Britain, in particular, became a great exporter of trash television that was often notably cruel as well as coarse; I suspect that the Great Awokening, and its turn towards an incoherent new puritanism, was a reaction to this era."
Certainly in a frightening world where those who are immersed in "postmodernist" writings are among the select literate group who go to higher education and the rest of the population are the post-literate TV watchers:
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/liberals-read-conservatives-watch
"We are never bored, even when confined to our homes during the 2020 lockdown, when most people were able to access an almost infinite number of films and television shows to pass the time; had the pandemic taken place when I was growing up, the choice would have been between Hale and Pale or Watchdog or, dare I say it, a book. Imagine if we only had the Bible to entertain us?"
Had the pandemic occurred in most if not all of the 20th Century, it have been seen as an absurdity and practical impossibility send and entire planet to their homes for months for the sake of a disease that mostly just killed older people and a small percentage of them at that. There would be little practical ways to stay in communication and keep the vital machines running without going outside regularly.
Do we know if Postman knew he was the subject of a Simpson’s joke?
I don't know. Groening has praised him I believe
"In 1690 came America’s first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick, established in Boston by one Benjamin Harris, whose previous scoops back in England included exposing a non-existent conspiracy by Catholics to burn down London for his paper Domestick Intelligence, which gives some indication of the tone. "
The dropping of the "k" from the ends of words like "Publick", "Musick", and "Magick" was a curious innovation of Noah Webster that actually spread to both sides of the Atlantic unlike so many other examples of "American spelling" invented by him.
"Television was one of the most quickly adopted technologies in history. Its impact was revolutionary in cultural, social and political terms. It also had a quite immediate impact on the number of hours people spent reading, so ending the supremacy of this medium after centuries."
I would add that George Orwell famously conceived of a dystopian world with ubiquitous "telescreens" in the 1940s even though the medium was just getting off the ground.
"The Republic was founded by intellectuals"
With the best will in the world to our American cousins, 'the Republic' was founded by slave drivers, defaulters on British debt, criminals and smugglers and given an intellectual gloss by malcontented lawyers.
The 'Enlightenment' was full of such pious frauds.
Yes, there is a grain of truth in your cynical (and hopefully tongue in cheek) comment. But while the founders of the American republic were not saints, they were mostly incredibly brave, driven and often brilliant men. The more history I read, the more miraculous the whole thing seems to me.
I think they were a brilliant collection of men personally, Hamilton and Franklin my personal favourites. A real shame Britain handled it as they did.
Certainly, they were a brilliant generation.
They were also highly self-interested.
With all goodwill to American friends (and family) I can't personally bring myself to sympathise with the American Rebellion nor to accept the high-sounding subsequent justifications advanced on its behalf. I think it was a mistake and a crime.
That said, there was something undoubtedly miraculous to it.
Lecky's description of the camp at Valley Forge (December 1777) is memorable to that effect - when you consider what the republic has become:
"...The time was, indeed, well fitted to winnow the chaff from the grain; and few braver and truer men were ever collected around a great commander than those who remained with Washington during that dreary winter in Valley Forge, some twenty miles from Philadelphia. ‘For some days past,’ wrote their commander on February 16, 1778, ‘there has been little less than a famine in the camp; a part of the army has been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. Naked and starving as they are, we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery, that they have not been ere this excited by their sufferings to a general mutiny and dispersion. Strong symptoms, however, of discontent have appeared in particular instances, and nothing but the most active efforts everywhere, can long avert so shocking a catastrophe.’
Many, indeed, fell away. ‘No day, nor scarce an hour passes,’ wrote Washington in December, ‘without the offer of a resigned commission.'
Many fled to the country and to their friends, and not less than 3,000 deserters came from the American camp to the British army at Philadelphia"
A History of England in the Eighteenth Century Vol. IV
"I once tried introducing my teenage daughter to the Sherlock Holmes series I watched as a child:"
Possibly the best TV series (apart from Dempsey and Makepeace) that ITV made.
The best Netflix has made is of course "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Dog,_New_Tricks_(TV_series)"
I've heard good things about that
Yes - if you have children who are studying Spanish GCSE and you want to discourage them from being a vet, it's perfect.
IDGI
Actually, I think you’re correct about the name of that song. Now I am shameful.
thank you. Still don't get it!
Actually, I think you’re correct about the name of that song (What’s up). Now I am shameful.