Avoiding the 3 Effects of Mind-numbing Media
How "Amusing Ourselves to Death" Became More than a Title
When I read Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, I never knew the phrase was literal. But then, I grew older. And now I see: Postman was playing it straight. The late professor of communications at NYU meant what he said: “. . . to death.” Not amusing. On the contrary: very sobering. And now, coming to a community near you.
I have written an op-ed for the Western Journal that appears here. In the article, I seek to locate and isolate three demonstrable consequences of the Novocain effect of nonstop media, all the time, everywhere, world without end. — M. A. Milton.
Unpacking Charles Taylor’s Excarnation
I have written an op-ed for the Western Journal that appears here. In the article, I seek to locate and isolate three demonstrable consequences of the Novocain effect of nonstop media, all the time, everywhere, world without end. The article has as much to do with how life has changed in Western English-speaking countries as anything. From a real community of interconnected People voluntarily tethered (for preservation, yes, but also for the common good and human flourishing) to a virtual community (i.e., not a community) connected Person, head down, and “free” from the troublesome vicissitudes of face-to-face interaction with other sinners. Or, as Charles Taylor called it, “Excarnation.”
So we gravitate towards two possible positions; one tells us that we have to factor out our embodied feeling, our “gut reactions” in determining what is right, even set aside our desires and emotions. This move finds a paradigm statement in the work of Kant. Or else, we turn against excessive claims of reason, and base morality on emotions, as we find with him. But just for that reason, we undercut the aura of the higher that usually surrounds these feelings, giving them a purely naturalistic explanation. Embodied feeling is no longer a medium in which we relate to what we recognize as rightly bearing an aura of the higher; either we do recognize something like this, and we see a reason as our unique access to it; are we tend to reject this kind of higher altogether, reducing it through naturalistic explanation. This is the move which I want to call “excarnation” (Taylor, A Secular Age, 288).
Finding the Way
Mercifully, there is a Way out of “excarnation.” And so there is hope for the most disassociated among us. I trust you will locate that Way and embrace the One called “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” in the new article in Western Journal. Thanks for reading. Share as you feel led.
Or here: https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-mind-numbing-media-3-deadly-results-matter-survival/.
“As we are entertained by an endless stream of media, our ability to think critically is eroded. We no longer question what we hear or read. We accept everything at face value, without any thought or analysis. This makes us vulnerable to manipulation and propaganda.”—M. A. Milton.
References
Milton, Michael A. “Op-Ed: Mind-Numbing Media and the 3 Deadly Results That Matter for Survival,” Western Journal, May 2, 2023, https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-mind-numbing-media-3-deadly-results-matter-survival/.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. United Kingdom: Methuen, 1987.
Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 288.