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

3 new iPhone patents that promise to turn everything from calling grandma on her birthday to turning off your phone in a movie theater into gloriously mindless activities. (click on the picture to read more)

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 that 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 infinite appetite for distractions.”  In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting 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.

Foreword from Amusing Ourselves to Death, by Neil Postman.

I don’t know if the video above bothers you… but it does me.  Not because it is promoting television; most you know that I do not own a TV (and have not for 6 years).  Rather, it bothers me that our society has been reduced to such a level, that we don’t consider the implications of allowing our culture to show, as a reflection of it’s values, the acceptance of making a mockery of the people who advocate television is a disease.

The medium is not the discussion here.  If you argue that video is an important contribution to the betterment of humanity, we would not be having a discussion.  The concept of this argument is much broader than that.

I highly suggest you read Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman before you enter into any debate about television and it’s effects on our society and our culture. If you haven’t read this book, and are engaging in a discussion about TV, you are wrong.  Regardless of your logic, you are not informed of the facts, and your argument is flawed because of that.  The fact is that television is the single worst cause of cultural atrophy in human history.

What makes it worse for me is that homo sapiens everywhere laugh at this commercial and participate in the stereotyping of the idea that “those crazy conspiracy theorists think that aliens are making television melt your brain”, where in reality, replace the word aliens with corporations, and conspiracy theorists with homo sapiens who read; and you will have a truthful version if the statement.

People who watch television are being programmed.  That is the bottom line.  Television shows do not make money, they are a support structure to get you to watch advertising.  Ads are in fact the reason modern TV exists.  So you cannot debate that you are not being programmed.

I know, I know… here it goes: “so what about Hulu, or TIVO, or anything on the internet.”  Case closed.

These people are so programmed, they cannot see the messages the shows they watch send their brains.  The ads have morphed.  The have evolved out of the allocated commercial spot to the actual show.  I know, I’ve been on TV.  I’ve “advertised” to you.  Before any one attempts an ad hominem, the difference between my television appearance is that I am offering a service that you will use only if you need it.  I cannot make you think you need my service to be part of a clique or a trend.

Television today sells lifestyle.  Music videos are no longer music videos.  They sell lifestyle.  Look back at the videos of the 50’s… they were bands playing music.  That’s it. Today, music videos are mini movies.  That’s because we are bored.  We need more and more and more.  Because if you enter the television rabbit hole, your brain adapts to 45 second segment representing a new kind of life, and your attention spans shrivels.

It never ceases to amuse me when parents tell you with a baffled look that their child has been diagnosed with an attention deficit disorder.  I wonder, where these kids when I was their age?  I remember everyone in my schools being able to keep their attention on the teacher when they spoke? (maybe I went to the only school in the country where kids didn’t have this disease?)

Hulu is another version of keeping people plugged in.  Think about it people… NOTHING in life is free.  Why would networks put their shows on the internet FOR FREE?  You really think they love their audience that much that they would forgo compensation for their hard work, let alone their money?  The fact is, shows now a days are heavily immersed with subversive advertising.  There are entire departments in studios that do product placement.

You ever watch Jerry Seinfeld?  Then you were exposed to 9 years of Apple Mac computers in the background in his house.  Some might say this is crazy, but the fact is that companies pay to be highlighted or placed in successful shows.

So what’s the best way to thwart any suspicion of this newly adopted technique of washing your brains?  Make fun of the people who are warning you of it.  Make their warning a joke… and I present you the Hulu commercials.  Literally telling you ‘yes, television melts your brain, but of course, that’s what we want.”

I also often wonder… why does anyone I challenge about television, rebut with such hostility?  Almost like you are telling a heroine addict they have a problem.  I only met a few people who could step up to the challenge of getting rid of their TVs.  I mean, do ANY of you ever wonder what life would be like without a television?  Would it matter if you knew about storms in Florida?  Would your life be different if the evening news didn’t inform you of the shooting on the other side of Los Angeles?

How would you know?  Everyone from my generation was born into a world with TVs already in every home.  Kids today won’t know a world of analog music.  They cannot imagine a world without cell phones.  That is because we were 20 when cell phones were created… these kids weren’t even born yet.

The world has changed.  But not because it HAD to.  Because the lack of an informed citizenry and an apathetic consumer society has allowed it to change.  Today, we don’t respect each other and our humanity anymore.  This used to be the very tenet that bound every past society to it’s pursuit of freedom and justice.  Today, we celebrate crooks like Donald Trump and make them into celebrities.

If you want more proof of this, you can conduct a very simple experiment.  Try walking places or biking places for 1 month.  Just for a month, try to bike or walk to as many normal places you go to with a car.  You will be confronted with the self centered and oblivious public I am talking about.  The TV generation is everywhere.

But don’t take my word for it.  Read.  Buy Neil Postman’s book and prove it for yourself.  This book was written 20 years ago, yet it still holds true and logically sound.

Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of [an] artificial medium. — Ernest Cassirer