thoughts – Dhriti Patel

Amusing Ourselves To Death, by Neil Postman

To hold accountability for myself (and to have a place to store all of the thoughts while reading the book, for help in scripting a final YouTube video (or multiple videos on each point)) here is where I list down all thoughts in the form of mini-essays and headings:

1. The Title

The title Amusing Ourselves to Death feels profoundly relevant, especially in today’s digital age, where entertainment has taken over nearly every aspect of life. Social media platforms, streaming services, and short-form content like reels and TikToks cater to—and feed onto—our constant craving for amusement, often at the expense of critical thinking. It makes an already bad situation worse, and keeps on worsening it.

Much like Postman’s critique of television, modern digital tools prioritize instant gratification. Spectacle over depth and truth. Political campaigns are reduced to viral moments, news is sensationalized for clicks, and even education is gamified to maintain attention. Some things work to benefit, some to detriment.

In a time when distraction has become a cultural norm for all ages, the title underlines the stark reality: society’s over-reliance on amusement as a form of engagement risks trivializing important issues and eroding intellectual discourse, making Postman’s warning more urgent and relevant than ever.

2. Orwell vs Huxley

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wher- ever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another-slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, 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 would 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. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distrac- tions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflict- ing pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
In the Foreword of Amusing Ourselves To Death, by Neil Postman

(create flowcharts for different mechanism, same end result)

Neil Postman juxtaposes the dystopian visions of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World to contextualize his argument about the dangers of media-driven culture. While both authors warned of the same end result (i.e. societies losing their freedom and hence, humanity), they envisioned different mechanisms for this decline.

Orwell’s 1984: External Oppression by Force
Orwell imagined a society dominated by authoritarian regimes that use force and censorship to suppress ideas and control people. Truth is actively distorted. Individuality is crushed under a surveillance state. Fear ensures obedience. Punishment and propaganda are used as whips to keep citizens in line.

Huxley’s Brave New World: Internal Oppression by Pleasure
Huxley wrote of a society enslaved by its own desires and distractions. In his world, truth and critical thinking are irrelevant because people are pacified by endless entertainment, consumerism, and indulgence in pleasure. Individuals willingly surrender their autonomy because they are too distracted or content to care about deeper issues.

Which one of these dystopias feel closer to present day home? Are people not reading books because they’re banned by the government, or are they not reading books because they can’t, because it’s just that difficult, because there’s better (read as: easier, more pleasurable) things to do? You spend 8 hours on Instagram or Tik tok or Twitter or YouTube or your chosen drug and do you remember all that you saw? Is that how you want to be spending your 8 hours? Thoughtlessly, mindlessly, with zero intentionality. (Refer to: how in Flow the author writes that even leisure time should have intentional structure for it to be enjoyable.)

Our passive surrender to pleasure and trivial amusements is what has made critical thinking obsolete.

(simplified: carrot vs stick)

3. Reframing of the meaning of pleasure and leisure

Comment on Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and how he writes that even leisure time needs a certain degree of structure for it to be beneficial for you. Pleasure has completely changed its meaning. We don’t find that many things funny lately. Our standards have lowered. Even mildly amusing is deemed as valuable enough to occupy our time.

(past vs present, how the meaning of pleasure has changed for us)

(references or further reading/watching)

Why don’t I post?

I don’t know, I believe it’s just simpler that way. Personally. Atleast for me, it is.

The primary reason is: I fear context collapse. Like, the pictures and captions I’d use for close friends differ very wildly from the ones I’d use for college friends or for family or for cousins or from casual acquaintances. Everyone gets different parts of you. There’s no general way I can be that’s appropriate for everyone, without dulling certain aspects of me, without cutting away certain parts of me. And I don’t wanna do that. So I don’t post. So that every time talking with anyone, new or old, I’m free to pick which parts of me do I wanna show and focus on.

Like, yes, obviously I do want people to know that I can hold a headstand, but no, thank you, I would not put up a picture for anyone (including a certain slightly creepy guy from eight grade) to look at. Instead of being careful about who I let into my circle of updates (which would require so much vigilance and which wouldn’t work out anyway), I would prefer to let everyone in and avoid putting myself up.

I do keep the occasional stories though. The temporariness of them takes my concerns away.

I wouldn’t want my family to see me the same way my friends do, right? And I interact with a lot of different people in a lot of different ways, both (semi) professionally and personally. I’d like everyone to come up with a blank slate for me to write on. This way I can put up a different side of me for everyone according to the context, and that’s great. That even helps me with developing my own sense of self by letting me variate and experiment with a multitude of different ways.

And capitally, I like the freeness that comes with clicking pictures and not them having to be “IG worthy.” It lets me click pictures for the sake of memories. Idk, it’s probably because I don’t trust myself with something as addictive as IG. Maybe I think I have terrible self control. Maybe I’m afraid that I’ll lose myself once I start putting myself up. Whatever it is, I don’t. And that’s okay. The only thing because of not posting that has happened is I’ve just gotten hella number of questions till date, just that, nothing else.

And one more thing: no one notices if you don’t post, and no one cares. So I rather do what I would prefer more, send direct pictures to the ones I want knowing about it. My people that is. The ones who care. The ones who are genuinely interested in what I’ve been upto and not just who click on my story just because it’s there. I never want to be anyone’s “just because it’s there.”

I like some aspects of my life private, because so much of me is already public. I’m way too revealing IRL, and to keep a balance, I avoid being so virtually. Keeping some things about me to myself helps me preserve my sense of self.

And it takes too much time. Too much time, too many efforts go into these things once you start posting. Idk about anyone else, but if I start, I’ll fall down in the black hole of editing and curating and filtering. I would rather instead prefer to put that time and mental energy somewhere else. That’s another reason.

I don’t think I’m superior or preach that everyone should stop posting. No. Nothing like that. It’s just I don’t want to, so I won’t. If you want to, you do you. You do whatever you want, whatever suits you. This is not a question of moral superiority, just our own personal preferences.

I found another parallel in music. I don’t take recommendations from anyone. No one except my two favourite people. Legit no one else. Do I think other people’s taste in music is inferior? No. Obviously not. They’d be listening to the same songs as us. But I don’t want to share that part of me. For no solid reason. Just because I don’t want to. It’s just some part of me that I’ve kept to myself and to the ones I love.

In one sentence I’d say: I don’t post because it’s just simpler that way.

8th September, 2023:

There’s something unnatural about curating all of one’s best moments, best smiles, best angles, best people and making a catalog of them and putting them out there. We humans are always a mix of the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the hard and the soft. The curation only allows for the light, the good, and the hard. It just doesn’t work that way. I can’t feel it working for me. I’d feel unnatural, artificial, fake of sorts. I don’t post because it’s just not human.