It's Not Orwell, It's Brave New World(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
It's Not Orwell, It's Brave New World
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/feb/02/amusing-ourselves-to-death-neil-postman-trump-orwell-huxley
26 comments
Other than flat panel TV's and cell phones, a lot of people in "middle America" have gotten absolutely shit out of the last 20 - 30 years. Work's more for less and no advancement. The future is ever more uncertain. Healthcare's gone from expensive to unachievable. Illegal immigration has produced considerable downward pressure on lower-end jobs as well as non-wage benefits (illegals have no leverage with respect to benefits, and this places additional pressure on everyone else to give up on them).
My cousin's little old farm town in the middle of Nebraska has become significantly "hispanified." And while many of them are nice enough, a significant fraction are not. Regardless, it has produced a very significant, dramatic local social and cultural shift. Which many remaining voters find quite disruptive.
Republican as well as Democratic "internationalists" turned their backs on these potential voters and with varying forms of rhetoric about "the greater good."
Well, there's only so much personal sacrifice people are going to put up with.
Trump... well, whatever you think about truth and falsehood with respect to him and the people immediately around him (campaign, advisors, talking heads, opportunists, hangers-on... oh, and his family), he gave this demographic a message to vote for.
In the U.S., social cohesion has always been limited and reinforced significantly through force and intimidation rather than cooperation. But, in a politically significant while not / no longer economically and popularly dominant demographic, it wore thin enough to engender this disruption.
The "internationalists" forgot the first rule of politics and of social stability: To take care of your own. Well, they came to mis-identify "their own" in terms of their personal economic benefit as opposed to the polities they formally represented.
Having watched my own little economic sector, tech., get run over by outsourcing and ageism, I have very little sympathy for them nor for the economic friends they thought they were representing.
P.S. I'm no Trump supporter. I'm simply saying, neither am I surprised by what's happened. Except, perhaps, than he actually achieved the Presidency. The Clinton camp and the DNC can hang that one squarely around their necks.
P.P.S. I'm not particularly defending the Trump voter, either. A lot of nastiness and short-sightedness and myopic self-interest in that camp, too. Nonetheless, they are voters -- members of society -- and trying to quietly flush them down the drain was not a particularly astute political strategy.
P.P.P.S. There is also another -- and perhaps the dominant -- side to Trump support: People who believe simply that you get what you deserve. Regardless of circumstances. They are doing ok -- well, even. And that they entirely deserve credit for that. Anyone else? Not their problem. And if the other person's circumstances leave them down and out: Well, they deserve that.
Some of these people: They will take and take. I experienced this personally, this past year, trying to help one of them out of difficult straights. As their circumstances improved -- not insignificantly through considerable dint of effort on my part -- they became less grateful rather than more, and a criticism of others that I thought they were initially beginning to see past, returned in full force.
Direct kindness ultimately had no influence on their perspective and behavior -- no matter what words and attitudes they used to initially solicit and gain support.
And THIS really scares me, more than a bit. Or divests me somewhat more of my own apparently mistaken ideals.
Some of these people, are simply intractable. There is no compromise with them, no coming to a mutual understanding.
Were the "internationalists" right, simply to try to leave them behind? No -- even if they are intractable, simply ignoring them is short-sighted, in its own fashion.
Anyway, I've glued enough P.S.'s onto this comment that reflects my continuing struggle to find my own way through these set of personalities written wholesale onto our current politics.
My cousin's little old farm town in the middle of Nebraska has become significantly "hispanified." And while many of them are nice enough, a significant fraction are not. Regardless, it has produced a very significant, dramatic local social and cultural shift. Which many remaining voters find quite disruptive.
Republican as well as Democratic "internationalists" turned their backs on these potential voters and with varying forms of rhetoric about "the greater good."
Well, there's only so much personal sacrifice people are going to put up with.
Trump... well, whatever you think about truth and falsehood with respect to him and the people immediately around him (campaign, advisors, talking heads, opportunists, hangers-on... oh, and his family), he gave this demographic a message to vote for.
In the U.S., social cohesion has always been limited and reinforced significantly through force and intimidation rather than cooperation. But, in a politically significant while not / no longer economically and popularly dominant demographic, it wore thin enough to engender this disruption.
The "internationalists" forgot the first rule of politics and of social stability: To take care of your own. Well, they came to mis-identify "their own" in terms of their personal economic benefit as opposed to the polities they formally represented.
Having watched my own little economic sector, tech., get run over by outsourcing and ageism, I have very little sympathy for them nor for the economic friends they thought they were representing.
P.S. I'm no Trump supporter. I'm simply saying, neither am I surprised by what's happened. Except, perhaps, than he actually achieved the Presidency. The Clinton camp and the DNC can hang that one squarely around their necks.
P.P.S. I'm not particularly defending the Trump voter, either. A lot of nastiness and short-sightedness and myopic self-interest in that camp, too. Nonetheless, they are voters -- members of society -- and trying to quietly flush them down the drain was not a particularly astute political strategy.
P.P.P.S. There is also another -- and perhaps the dominant -- side to Trump support: People who believe simply that you get what you deserve. Regardless of circumstances. They are doing ok -- well, even. And that they entirely deserve credit for that. Anyone else? Not their problem. And if the other person's circumstances leave them down and out: Well, they deserve that.
Some of these people: They will take and take. I experienced this personally, this past year, trying to help one of them out of difficult straights. As their circumstances improved -- not insignificantly through considerable dint of effort on my part -- they became less grateful rather than more, and a criticism of others that I thought they were initially beginning to see past, returned in full force.
Direct kindness ultimately had no influence on their perspective and behavior -- no matter what words and attitudes they used to initially solicit and gain support.
And THIS really scares me, more than a bit. Or divests me somewhat more of my own apparently mistaken ideals.
Some of these people, are simply intractable. There is no compromise with them, no coming to a mutual understanding.
Were the "internationalists" right, simply to try to leave them behind? No -- even if they are intractable, simply ignoring them is short-sighted, in its own fashion.
Anyway, I've glued enough P.S.'s onto this comment that reflects my continuing struggle to find my own way through these set of personalities written wholesale onto our current politics.
Thank you for your writeup; it was thoughtful and well-phrased.
To add to this, I bet most people here would think that the immigration changes are universally loathed, but most Americans support them:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-poll...
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-immigration-poll...
Isn't this article purely an opinion piece? I don't mind, but if it is, it should be labeled as such and not passed off as investigative journalism. That being said, you could argue that its both or any number of things, for example:
news supression/distortion -> Orwell
class system of superiors/inferiors -> Brave New World
Could even possibly throw Citizen Kane into the mix but that may be a stretch.
news supression/distortion -> Orwell
class system of superiors/inferiors -> Brave New World
Could even possibly throw Citizen Kane into the mix but that may be a stretch.
So Brazil minus the ducts?
Throughout this entire election and transition I've been wondering if Neil Postman's son is going to remind people of his father's warning in "Amusing Ourselves to Death". It's truly surreal that this detailed prediction I read years ago, written two years before I was born, has been playing out in such a spectacularly... real way. There's this feeling you get when you understand what we're in the grips of yet you also observe and experience just how overwhelmingly impossible it is for everyone to confront the same realizations in order for us to course-correct and avoid what increasingly feels like an inevitable disaster.
Neil Postman was both somewhat deterministic in his beliefs about our future and then reluctantly optimistic when pushed. In an interview he jokingly qualified his optimistic statement with "but remember I'm an American which means I'm eternally optimistic". I think he was also very struck with this feeling, that it is all so clear what is happening yet the dance continues and to warn people, to educate, to improve things in a systemic way that'd be sufficient enough in capacity to combat these omnipresent machinations is so overwhelmingly difficult and complex that one feels a bit hopeless.
In that same interview he said "..to the extent that there would be a serious conversation among Americans about these issues I think we could pull through." (Link to end of interview: https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m)
Because this problem is so complex and deeply-entrenched in so many facets of our existence whatever course-correction can be made will have to be the result of a phenomenon which I'd describe as very much "emergent". And that phenomenon will be an amalgamation of shifts in thought and behavior spanning all facets of culture and society. You could say "organic movement" but I am not even so hopeful as to think one or a few "organic" movements would suffice. I believe the shift would have to be systemic but also cultural, only a shift in our beliefs- in what our culture deems valuable would provide enough motivation to re-center ourselves around a new definition of civic duty.
Ever since I wanted to be a web developer my dream was to start a successful startup that would allow me to then fund the development of a web technology, likely a platform of some sort, that would help solve some of these bewilderingly complex problems primarily rooted in education. I am always trying to think of how a web technology could fit into the puzzle.
However, if a the American people do not start a discussion about this problem (not one facet of the problem like "fake news" but an acknowledgement of it's deeply-entrenched, multi-faceted nature) than we cannot give it a name and fight it. We cannot begin to plan solutions if we do not first have most people on board which the fact that the problem exists in the first place.
If you've read this far maybe you too are interested in this problem and maybe a couple web developers slowly ideating and iterating over time could be a valuable contribution? Feel free to hit me up: james.checks.his.email at gmail dot com.
*edited to add link to interview.
Neil Postman was both somewhat deterministic in his beliefs about our future and then reluctantly optimistic when pushed. In an interview he jokingly qualified his optimistic statement with "but remember I'm an American which means I'm eternally optimistic". I think he was also very struck with this feeling, that it is all so clear what is happening yet the dance continues and to warn people, to educate, to improve things in a systemic way that'd be sufficient enough in capacity to combat these omnipresent machinations is so overwhelmingly difficult and complex that one feels a bit hopeless.
In that same interview he said "..to the extent that there would be a serious conversation among Americans about these issues I think we could pull through." (Link to end of interview: https://youtu.be/FRabb6_Gr2Y?t=27m)
Because this problem is so complex and deeply-entrenched in so many facets of our existence whatever course-correction can be made will have to be the result of a phenomenon which I'd describe as very much "emergent". And that phenomenon will be an amalgamation of shifts in thought and behavior spanning all facets of culture and society. You could say "organic movement" but I am not even so hopeful as to think one or a few "organic" movements would suffice. I believe the shift would have to be systemic but also cultural, only a shift in our beliefs- in what our culture deems valuable would provide enough motivation to re-center ourselves around a new definition of civic duty.
Ever since I wanted to be a web developer my dream was to start a successful startup that would allow me to then fund the development of a web technology, likely a platform of some sort, that would help solve some of these bewilderingly complex problems primarily rooted in education. I am always trying to think of how a web technology could fit into the puzzle.
However, if a the American people do not start a discussion about this problem (not one facet of the problem like "fake news" but an acknowledgement of it's deeply-entrenched, multi-faceted nature) than we cannot give it a name and fight it. We cannot begin to plan solutions if we do not first have most people on board which the fact that the problem exists in the first place.
If you've read this far maybe you too are interested in this problem and maybe a couple web developers slowly ideating and iterating over time could be a valuable contribution? Feel free to hit me up: james.checks.his.email at gmail dot com.
*edited to add link to interview.
angersock(5)
"the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this is not a typo – is 74 hours"
It's only inexplicable if you live in a coastal bubble where everyone thinks the same way you do. It can't be that your values were rejected by people you deride in "flyover country" (and still not by a majority of the country). No, it must be that they've been brainwashed by television!
But somehow the purveyors of this theory have remained untouched by the corrupting influence of mass media.