Amusing Ourselves to Death – Part 2

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Part 2

Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, spends the second half of his book detailing the “Age of Television” and its affects on our conversation, our culture, and our intellect.  The picture he paints is indeed frightening and eerily accurate, despite it being published in the mid-80s.

Postman’s main idea is that although few would argue that television equals entertainment, what is not realized is that entertainment has become the medium through which all of our information is disseminated.  Our culture does not take anything seriously unless it is entertaining.  The news is a perfect example of this concept.  While the newscasters relay stories of natural disasters, murders, burglaries, and other forms of violence, they consistently convey a detached and pleasant demeanor.  Flipping through stories like a money-counter flips through change, they throw dozens of 30-second clips at us, and then ask in a delightful tone that we “join them tomorrow” in order to do it all over again.  The results?  We have become a culture that thrives on the same detached “here-and-now” mentality.  We are given no opportunity or motivation to analyze and critique one piece of news before being drawn into the next 30-second clip of meaningless information.  And by meaningless information, I mean bits of data devoid of context or logical analysis and useful only in a crossword puzzle or at a game of trivial pursuit.  Because that is what most information broadcasted through our television sets is – trivial.  Postman describes perfectly the results of functioning by such entertainment-based-news:

“The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world….Let us consider…the case of Iran during the drama that was called the “Iranian Hostage Crisis.”  I don’t suppose there has been a story in years that received more continuous attention from television.  We may assume, then, that Americans know most of what there is to know about this unhappy event.  And now, I put these questions to you: Would it be an exaggeration to say that not one American in a hundred knows what language the Iranians speak?  Or what the word “Ayatollah” means or implies?  Or knows any details of the tenets of Iranian religious beliefs?  Or the main outlines of their political history?  Or knows who the Shah was, and where he came from?”  (pg.106-7)

Postman’s words are harsh, but ring true even as I inspect my own life.  How many hours of news and stories have I watched on television and YouTube and yet have no solid base of foundational knowledge to show for it?

‘But, wait!’ you say.  ‘What about shows made exclusively for education, such as Nova, PBS, and Sesame Street?’  Well, lucky for you, Postman addresses these shows as well.  The main problem, he writes, is not that these programs aren’t conveying some kind of useful information, but that they are conveying the information as entertainment.  Children are being brought up on Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow and Dora the Explorer, and are beginning to equate entertainment, instead of good old-fashioned schoolroom work, to education.  No wonder the number of children with attention disorders and attitude problems is skyrocketing!  They show up for their first day of 1^st grade, and it turns out to be nothing like the “education” they received from Barney and Big Bird!  They’ve been duped!  This can’t really be education!  And so they quit or act out.  Or perhaps even worse, they do just enough to get by so their parents don’t take away their televisions and PS3 rights.

Postman continues his discourse into the areas of politics and religion as well.  Basically, entertainment reigns supreme on the “tube”.  Although Postman did not have the pleasure of being able to glean the latest Presidential Election as evidence for his point, it aptly proved the role that “image” plays in a person’s choice of a candidate.  The same goes for televangelists.  Very rarely do you see a pastor on television that is not at least tolerably good looking, has a nice smile, a charismatic attitude, backed by a beautiful stage with colorful flowers and a talented choir.  And if you do, they don’t last long.  The very nature of television demands this, forcing its content to become a kind of “image therapy” that appeals to some deep-seated need for satisfaction or acceptance within the viewer.

Because the television is based solely on “speed-of-light” images and instantaneous gratification, history in any shape or form becomes obsolete.  Information is dished out to us in fragmented bursts devoid of context, and thus we have begun to think and operate in a similar fashion – living from piece to piece of new information or circumstance.  Bill Moyers, well-known news telecaster of the 70s and 80s, was quoted from a speech at the Jewish Museum in New York City in 1984, saying “I worry that my own business…helps to make this an anxious age of agitated amnesiacs….We Americans seem to know everything about the last twenty-four hours but very little of the last sixty centuries or the last sixty years.”  We have all heard at one time or another, that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  The question is have we made the connection between television as a medium and this slow disintegration of a nation founded on history?

Postman concludes his book by drawing some comparisons between the works of George Orwell in his 1984 and Aldous Huxley in his Brave New World, and the path our country is on.  For those of you unfamiliar with these classics, 1984 is the story of the “Big Brother” government, akin to V for Vendetta (which I am sure more people are familiar with versus a book).  Censorship, government totality and oppression, etc.  Brave New World, however, is about a completely different kind of slavery.  It is one imposed by the people on the people.  Self-inflicted.  Addicted to being entertained and provided for, the people of Brave New World give up personal identity, cognitive ability, and corporate history.  Postman claims that between the two, Huxley was on the right track, for what could be better for a dictator than a people who willingly and unknowingly give up their rights and freedoms in exchange for a few tickles to the brain?  “For in the end,” Postman closes, “he [Huxley] was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” (pg.163)

Amusing Ourselves to Death – Part I

Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, makes an interesting case on how our generation has migrated from a culture centered on the written word, or the “Age of Typography”, to a culture centered on the visual word, or the “Age of Television”, and how this shift has led to our demise as a thoughtful and intelligent people.

Postman begins his dissertation by tracing the evolution of how different cultures throughout mankind’s history have portrayed and communicated knowledge and truth.  The oral tradition forms the basis of the justice system in a tribe of western Africa, yet in the justice system of America, judges and lawyers give little heed to oral axioms or proverbs.  Rather, the written law is of more import.  In ancient Greece the shift “from the ear to the eye” (12) was the birth of philosophy, a discipline that is useless without the ability to put down and have critiqued one’s ideas.  Postman claims that just as the rule of the oral word has fallen to the written word, our generation is going through a similar shift from the written word to the visual word, mediated by technology and electronics.

Before the invention of the telegraph, the photograph, and the television, the printed word reigned supreme in colonial American.  The literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut between 1640 and 1700 exceeded 90%.  This monopoly was due not only to the lack of any alternatives for acquiring information, but also came as a result of the Reformation, where the translation of the Bible into the layman’s tongue and the invention of the printing press freed the people from the ignorance previously imposed on them by the Catholic church and the monarchy.  And since the colonial American spoke the same language as its motherland, Great Britain, it was no great hardship for the products of Gutenburg’s printing press to make its way to the shores of the New World.  There was no “literary aristocracy”, as Postman puts it.

One prime example Postman uses to demonstrate the typographic mind of the colonial American is the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1850s.  These debates, typical of any oratory event during this time period, lasted for upwards of five hours and never ran short on an audience.  At one such debate, Douglas was to deliver a three-hour address to which Lincoln would have an equal amount of time to respond.  However, when Lincoln’s time came, he reminded his audience that it was already 5 p.m., and suggested that the people go home for dinner and reconvene later that night for the final four hours of the talk.  What audience today would agree to such a proposal in good-humour and willingly return to complete the remaining four out of seven hours of oratory?  The other interesting facet of these debates resides in the content of the address’ themselves.  Read, or better yet listen, to any of the speeches given by both candidates, and it becomes readily evident that their prose is pure script.  It often involves intricate grammar and sentence structure that required a high literacy rate of its listeners.  Its content often assumed the audience to have knowledge of historical events, past legal issues, and previous addresses by a variety of political speakers.

Postman concludes Part I of his book with a promise to spend the second half shifting the focus from the past to the present and the future.  From the Golden Age of Typography to the Slow but Sure Downfall of Human Intellect, illuminated by the flickering light of a television set.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this review.

…..is like Christmas without a Santa Claus!

1. Trans-Siberian Orchestra

We as a family have gone to see TSO in concert every year recently…until this year.  But hope springs eternal.  I am trying to convince them to take a spontaneous road trip to Little Rock or Birmingham and scalp for tickets.  ;)

2. X-mas playlist

Visions of a perfect Christmas holiday well-spent include the sounds of Manheim Steamroller, TSO, and Bryan Duncan’s “Christmas is Jesus” album playing softly in the background.  Pristine perfection.

3. Nativity scene

Yes, a nativity scene may seem a bit cliche.  I mean, it’s not like that’s what the Christmas holidays is really all about, right?  ;)  But the one at our house holds a special significance.  I will always cherish those memories of my mom slowly opening the cardboard box and handing us the individual hand-painted pieces wrapped in packing paper.  It was almost like an early Christmas when I would open each one and see which piece I got to place in the nativity.  I hope one day to carry on my mother’s tradition and paint my own nativity scene pieces to share with my children.

4.  Eggnog

Yet again, my family presents the essence of weirdness on this subject.  Every year, my dad buys cans of the Borden’s eggnog.  He opens one at a time.  And he drinks it.  One 2 ounce glass at a time.  And you think I’m joking.  When we were younger, my sister and I would stand, wide-eyed, as dad would bring out the revered can.  We, in hushed whispers, would ask for just a taste of the heavenly concoction.  And graciously, our dad would fill half of that 2 ounce glass and hand it to us to savor by the Q-tip-full.

5.  Christmas morning Cinnamon Rolls

Every year for as long as I can remember, our household would wake Christmas morning to the delectable scent of cinnamon rolls.  My mother is an accomplished cook, but her cinnamon rolls have to be at the top of her culinary arts list.  Two years ago, I was convinced to try and “stand in” for my mom and make the fabled cinnamon rolls.  Let’s just say most people ended up eating cereal that morning.  Last year, though, I overcame my fears of failure and of under-rolling the dough, and produced a favorable version of mom’s cinnamon rolls.

But more than the music and the eggnog and the food is the family that I am blessed to share the Christmas season with.  I have been blessed beyond words with a family and an extended family that love Christ, love each other, and find joy in serving one another.  So while the music is fun to listen to, it’s nothing unless listened to in good company.  And while eggnog and cinnamon rolls are good eats, they lose their charm if not originating from a loving heart.

Merry Christmas, one and all.  Cherish your families and make sure they know how much they are appreciated and loved.

Morning

I woke up in darkness
Surrounded by silence
Oh where, where have I gone?
I woke to reality
Losing its grip on me
Oh where, where have I gone?

(O Lord, how my adversaries have increased!
Many are rising up again me.
Many are saying of my soul,
“There is no deliverance for him in God.)

Cause I can see the light
before I see the sunrise

(“But You, O Lord, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head.”)

You called and you shouted
broke through my deafness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!

(“I was crying to the Lord with my voice,
And He answered me from His holy mountain.”)

You shattered my darkness
washed away my blindness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!

(“I lay down and slept;
I awoke, for the Lord sustains me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people
Who have set themselves
Against me round about.”)

Late have I loved you,
you waited for me,
I searched for you…
what took me so long?

I was looking outside
as a love would ever want to hide
I’m finding I was wrong

(“Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God!
For you have smitten all my enemies on the cheek;
You have shattered the teeth of the wicked.”)

Cause I can feel the wind
before it hits my skin

You called and you shouted
broke through my deafness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!

You shattered my darkness
washed away my blindness
now I’m breathing in
and breathing out
I’m alive again!

(“Salvation belongs to the Lord;
Your blessing be upon Your people!”)

“Alive Again” – Matt Maher
Psalm 3 – King David

A Quick Note to Clear My Conscience

Ok.  The Fall.  I think everybody who reads this (all three of you) is pretty familiar with the story.  Well, I was wondering, did Adam and Eve sweat before the Fall?  What do you think?  Hmmm…

This came up briefly during a study session the other night, but seeing as the Neuromuscular Junction was slightly more present on our minds at the moment, it didn’t really get to be fleshed out.  Well, let’s go to the text and see what that says.

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.”

17 And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”

The first thing that I notice, which happens to be a very interesting side note, is that God did not tell Eve that she would now experience pain in childbirth, but that her pain in childbearing would be multiplied.  For something to be multiplied into a greater magnitude, the initial amount cannot equal zero.  Anyway, just some extra grass for free — put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Moving right along.  Here in verse 19 is the reference to sweat.  Notice in verse 17 who God is talking to in this section.  Hm, I guess we women are out of luck as far as functional sweat glands are concerned.  In addition, when I read this verse, I don’t think “oh, yes…this is when people started to lose water and sodium from their pores.”  I tend to think “hmm…now Adam will sweat when he works the field, which maybe means that working that field will now be harder than it was before –which tends to jive with the reference to thorns and thistles.”  After all, God did command Adam and Eve to tend the garden in the previous couple chapters.

Finally, a more scientifically-directed note.  What is so evil about sweat?  True, it can turn a good date bad or sour an important interview, but physiologically, sweat is an important thermoregulator, just as panting is for dogs, the dampening of front paws is for cats, and the fanning of the large ears is for elephants.  When did “not mentioned in the Bible until verse 19″ start to mean that “none of it occurred in verses 1-18?”  Forgive my bluntness, but according to that kind of logic, people in the Bible didn’t perform many physiologically important functions conducive to life (yeah, don’t even get me started on thermodynamics).  Adam and Eve sweat, bled and voided before the Fall.  God said His Creation was good…not perfect.

This is just another example of how many of today’s Christians don’t take the time to study the Scriptures and let the words structure their theology and doctrine.  Instead they do the opposite, forcing it into their own mold, handed down by the previous generation guilty of the same sin.

A Lesson in Context

There have been several occasions over the last few weeks where I have thought “I need to blog about this”.  Alas! the troubles and travails of vet school!  Five tests in the span of two weeks (although I am not trying to complain) would stifle even Michelangelo’s creative talents.  However, here is a short note I just had to get out between classes this morning:

This past Sunday, one of the college students “guest-taught” the Sunday School.  His topic was Wisdom and the Call of Salvation.  I don’t want to get into the particulars right now because they are irrelevant.  What I do want to address is the use of a verse out of context – a practice that sadly happens too often in America’s churches.  2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”  The student pointed out (with strong emotion) that this verse discredits the view that “God loves some people, and not other” or that “God wants some people to go to heaven and others to hell”.  While I disagree that these two statements enumerate in any form or fashion the Reformed position, I will leave that dissertation up to smarter people than I.  My point is simply the misconstrued interpretation of this verse.

Who was 2 Peter written to?  Well, let’s look at verse 1 of chapter 1: “to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ”.  So this book is written to believers, to those who have already been called by God and are partakers of His grace.  So, then, let’s look at verse 3:9 again:

“…patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Who is the “you” in this verse?  It would be the same group that Peter has referred to this entire book – the elect, the believers.  So who does God not want to perish?  The elect.  The believers.

Just one more thought that might make this easier to understand.  If I were to stand up in the middle of a group of people and exclaim, “I don’t wish that any of you should be left out, so you should all come to my house for lunch!”  What does the word ‘all’ mean in this instance?  The whole of the human population?  I hope not or else I’d have to order more spinach creme puffs.  Just to say, you have to read a portion of Scripture in light of the context and how language works.  Just because I say everyone should come over does not mean literally, everyone.  Just because I say I love peanut butter and eat it all the time, does not mean I walk around with an IV drip of Jiffy.  And just because a verse can be construed and distorted to give the appearance of support to your doctrinal position, does not make it Truth.

TULIP

Ok, so hopefully my more substantial post which I began this morning will make it to the press soon, but until then…enjoy!

(P.S. It was amazing how many affirmative fist-pumps, head-nods, and chuckles of agreement came out of me during this…)

The Song Wheel

Yesterday was our last day of orientation in Vet School. One of the prominent speakers for the morning began his talk with a YouTube rendition of the song “I Can See Clearly Now”.  Then, with the soft plucking of the guitar in the background, he proceeded to urge all of us to find either a song, a book, or an event in our lives, that when we woke up wondering why we were putting ourselves through the misery of vet school, we could focus on this material object…and instantly feel better.  Pardon me for saying so, but I also think a shot of LSD would  satisfy this requirement.

The problem with looking to the material world when we feel depressed or discouraged is that it is often the material world itself that is frustrating us.  When we start to wilt under the intense class load and strike out at those around us from mental and physical fatigue, that is when we begin to realize that maybe we can’t do this on our own.  Why?  Because we are finite, natural beings.  Imperfect.  Flawed.  Overcome with our own pride and self-servience and greed.  Constrained by time and space and the laws of physics.  We wonder if our lives have a purpose, and if not, what’s the point of putting ourselves through the agony of attaining those three consonants after our name when we could just as easily float through our meaningless lives as burger-flippers or 7/11 cashiers?

And somehow a singing hippo or a Joel Osteen book will combat these thoughts and reveal our purpose in life?

Looking to the material world to solve our material problems will never satisfy.  Yes, it may dull the edge of hopelessness for a while, like a snort of cocaine dulls the hunger pains of an addict, but it will never be enough; and over time the dosage will have to be increased as our carnality grows and feeds on itself.  We seek to find an answer, yet somehow know that nothing in this world will completely solve the paradox.

What, then, is the answer?  C.S. Lewis gives us a substantial clue:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” (C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity)

The Last Hoorah

It is hard to believe that I am actually finally at the place where I have been trying to get for over ten years.  My brain is still trying to capture the reality and excitement of the phrase “I am in veterinary medicine school!”.  We have gone through the coating ceremony:

And the C.O.P.E. Course (Challenging Outdoor Personal Experience) @ Camp Seminole:

Both of which gave me the opportunity to get to know my classmate, and in a few words…THEY ROCK!!!  My MDL (multi-discipline lab) group is awesome and I have a feeling we’re going to have great fun (probably too much) over the next year (despite the fact that two of them are Ohio State Buckeyes fans…we shall forgive them…eventually).

So today, on this first Saturday as a vet student, I urge you be warned.  This is probably the last Saturday post that will be as long and detailed as this one, as from here on out my days will be filled with classes and work and studying and general disarray.  So farewell, and hope to see you on the other side.

(Almost) Dr. Beck

Come Full Circle

As the summer is drawing to a close, I encourage all of you to take what is left of your free time and dive into The Circle Trilogy written by Ted Dekker.  There are three books.  The first is Black – for the death of man.  The second is Red – for the blood spilt as a consequence.  The third is White – for his rebirth as Lover and Warrior.

Anyway, the final book in this series is coming out next month, entitle Green.  It will serve as the prequel and sequel to the Black/Red/White saga, bringing the story full circle.

Check them out!

If you are already a fan or want to become part of the circle, join the Forest Guard to stay up-to-date and for a chance to win Ted Dekker books and prizes!!  And please use my Forest Guard number when signing up!  6083