Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

by Neil Postman (1985)

Happy is the word of the age. Along with convenience, happy has become the criterion for normal. On the surface this sounds fine. In this book the author questions what our version of “happy” is. There are two ways of approaching the word’s meaning. The first, and evidently the accepted way, is simply to see happiness as the lack of problems. We live under the umbrella of such a definition. Leave the hassles behind. Lose the baggage. No downers, please. The second definition involves personal growth by overcome obstacles. That idea has little relevance in our society.

In the beginning of this slim two hundred page book, Mr. Postman, an educator by profession, discusses Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, comparing it to George Orwell’s 1984. and pursues determining which our society comes closest to. If you’re not familiar with either, Huxley’s Utopia situates everyone in a continual state of bliss. This is achieved through varying doses of a drug he calls Soma. Sadness and melancholy and worry are seen as aberrations. No one thinks much because that would be problematic, not to mention disruptive, for society as a whole.

In Orwell’s version, citizens are kept in line through police state tactics and jingoistic sentiment for a war which never ends. Patriotism wipes out thoughts of insurrection or free thought of any kind. In the event someone does stray from the fold, that person is dealt with. This is, in fact, the plot of the book, a renegade couple’s revolt and the way the state meets out corrective measures.

So, Postman asks, which framework do we fit into? Without serious question, America has embraced Huxley’s version blindly and subtly. We have become somatized, and thus happy, according to the our definition of that word. No, we’re not troublefree by any standard, but we do see happiness as state of being free of worries and problems and, most importantly, thought. Do we take soma tablets? No, we don’t need tablets, not when everywhere we look and everything we hear tells us to be good consumers of mass goods, to be up on the latest trends, and enjoy what is popular. It’s human nature to seek social approval and to strive to make our lives easier, but never in our history to this extent. Consumerism, blind belief in media presentations and the value of these, and an admiration for a care-free attitude are now widely accepted, nearly without question.

If you want to read a short compendium of what we have become and how we got here, Amusing will fill your needs. His follow-up Technopoly, written about ten years later, covers in greater detail the topic of our decent into what could be called a socially comatose state. Consider this short work an introduction to . . . us.