Neil Postman and Postmodernism

In "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Postman makes the argument that the nature of the visual entertainment medium degrades rational public discourse, political debate and public participation in government. Throughout Chapter 4 "The Typographic Mind" Postman cites countless examples of how 18th and 19th century American culture was print based, and how public involvement in politics was a national passion rather than a unnecessary nuisance as is commonly regarded today. Postman discusses the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates and their fundamentally different character from current political discourse. He wonders at the audiences ability to "cheerfully accommodate themselves to several hours of oratory". In today's culture he argues, it would be difficult or near impossible to engage an average citizens attention span for seven minutes, much less seven hours. In this fundamental premise he is correct. The average American today is possibly the "most entertained and least informed in the world". However, this "ignorant" American is capable of accessing almost unlimited information. He chooses television and limited corporate outlets because of the ease and relaxing nature of media information/entertainment as opposed to print. Postman makes several troubling epistemological arguments in his introduction and unfairly maligns technology and symbolic information by citing religious/ethical examples.

In Chapter 2 pg 29 Media as Epistemology Postman states that

" The invention of the printing press is itself a paradigmatic example. Typography destroyed fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval idea of community and integration. Typography created prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression. Typography made modern science possible but transformed religious sensibility into mere superstition. Typography assisted in the formation of the nation state but thereby made patriotism a sordid of not lethal emotion."

This is a preposterous statement. Medieval society and its domination by the catholic church represented one of the most unfortunate and oppressive eras in human history. The "community" was composed of corrupt priest's and nobles who controlled all the wealth and ruthlessly terrorized impoverished peasants. Serfs were tied to the land, unable to move freely, and prohibited from reading and writing. The invention of typography directly led to greater literacy, circulation of scientific and political ideas, the protestant reformation and liberty from the tyranny of the Catholic Church. Typography enhanced all forms of written expression and made it generally available not "elitist". In addition the absence of the "religious sensibility" that Postman laments represents an ethical/moral judgement. No reasonable person could possibly envy the "religious sensibility" of the medieval era. This would probably include witch burnings, executions for homosexuality, arbitrary punishment,coercive religious taxes(indulgences) and the brutalization of women.

Postman claims that he is no epistemological relatavist yet he states on pg 24 that

" We must remember that Galileo merely said that the language of Galileo is written in mathematics. He did not say everything is. And even the truth about nature need not be expressed in mathematics. For most of human history, the language of nature has been the language of myth and ritual. These forms, one might add, had the virtues of leaving nature unthreatened and of encouraging the belief that human beings are part of it. It hardly befits a people who stand ready to blow up the planet to praise themselves too vigorously for having found the true way to talk about nature"

This is a relativist epistemological argument typical among neo-Rousseauian socialist thinkers. The essential premise is that technology is bad and human beings are morally superior in a primitive state. He asserts that it is absurd for human beings to claim "the true way to talk about nature". He also states the the "truth about nature need not be expressed in mathematics". These are anti science, anti reason arguments which deprecate the scientific method. Science is not perfect, but it is certainly a more accurate interpretation of the natural world than religious ceremonies or superstitious beliefs. Postman's assertion that the process of language inherently changes the context of information is also absurd and relativist. If a symbol depicts the number zero in one language, and zero is depicted in another by a different symbol, it does not change the essential information which represents the numeric value of nothing.

Postman resorts to more ethical/moral based judgements by citing Decalogue, from the Second Commandment

"Thou Shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth"

Postman than comments that

" It is a strange injunction to include as part of an ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture."

Postman finally asserts that iconography and symbol based representation is "blasphemy" although he admits that

" If I am wrong in these conjectures, it is , I believe, a wise and particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the the culture's intellectual and social preoccupations."

Postman then goes on to define humanity, which of course can be done in two sentences

"Speech , or course, is the primal and indispensable medium. It made us human, keeps us human, and in fact defines what human."

This passage suggests a moral superiority of monotheistic culture over polytheistic culture. It also suggests an inherent ethical inferiority of symbolic representation. The greatest civilizations of the Ancient World including Egypt and China(to this day) utilized pictographic information in the formulation of their language, history, culture and architecture. Television by the nature of its medium, degrades the transmition of symbolic information. But to indite symbolic information in its entirety by using religious scripture is absurd and prejudicial. It is also predicated on "Judeo-Christian" values and is certainly not an objective source. Postman's statement on speech is even more ridiculous. Is a man that cannot speak or hear not human? Or perhaps it is his mind and ideas that make him human. Speech is nothing more but a system of grunts to convey ideas and information.