Sunday, July 21, 2019
Brave New World and Amusing Ourselves to Death connection
Amusing Ourselves to Death was concluded with a quote about Brave New World that said that it wasn't that the characters from BNW "were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking” (Postman 163). This quote really made me think because after a while of just doing what amuses them, they lost touch with reality. After taking soma to make everything unpleasant go away and hypnopedia telling them how to be, it made me realize that we use our technology to do the same exact thing but subtly. They got so used to their ways of living, that all of it became normalized to the point where they couldn't survive without it. I fear that as more and more technology is produced, it will only get worse. People are already so invested in the newest iPhone or the biggest tv's. Just wait until something extraordinary gets released--the entire world will be invested and will become weak and vulnerable without it.
-Mya Tan
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When I finished Amusing Ourselves to Death, I also had a few thoughts similar to yours. The soma they would take helped them escape reality, and had them living in their own world. Making everything outside their world terrifying, leading to them living on the soma. And at the rate we are going with technology we will eventually end up like them and won't be able to live without our electronic devices.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your assessments. However, I believe our society is already at a stage comparable to Brave New World. Postman argues that television gives us a constant flow of entertainment, and leaves no room for thinking or debating, similar to the situation in Brave New World, in which they strive to only amuse themselves.
ReplyDeleteWith the advent of smartphones and the internet, are we not already at this stage? Too many people today seek only to amuse themselves, through television, the internet, and social media. Rarely does one really stop and think about what they are doing. This is very similar to Brave New World, and Postman's predictions.