“There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first – the Orwellian – culture becomes a prison. In the second – the Huxleyan – culture becomes a burlesque …
“In America, Orwell’s prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley’s are well under way toward being realized …
[He goes on to reinforce his earlier argument that television - as a medium - is inherently a means of entertainment. Therefore, as public discourse involving commerce, religion, politics and education have become ever more reliant upon television (and the internet), our society has been reduced to a vast amusement park. Believing this, he continues ...]
“What I suggest here as a solution is what Aldous Huxley suggested, as well. And I can do no better than he. He believed with H. G. Wells that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and epistemology of media. For in the end, he 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.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment