“It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985

Reddit r / WorldNews comment message March 11, 2025 "In a way he's the perfect embodiment of our era. Everyone just desperate for fame or clout by any means despite how disgusting it leads them to act. Like if Johnny Somali was president. Clout Derangement Syndrome?"

(Notable that the user only joined Reddit 3 months ago)

back to 1986... Campbell

For this post, I'm shifting from subreddit core focus of 1985 Neil Postman book to Bill Moyers / George Lucas Skywalker Ranch / Joseph Campbell 1986 and 1987 interviews in Power of Myth.

BILL MOYERS: We seem to worship celebrities today, not heroes.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL (New Yorker, Professor at Sarah Lawrence College): Yes, and that’s too bad. A questionnaire was once sent around one of the high schools in Brooklyn which asked, “What would you like to be?” Two thirds of the students responded, “A celebrity.” They had no notion of having to give of themselves in order to achieve something.

MOYERS: Just to be known.

CAMPBELL: Just to be known, to have fame—name and fame. It’s too bad.

MOYERS: But does a society need heroes?

CAMPBELL: Yes, I think so.

MOYERS: Why?

CAMPBELL: Because it has to have constellating images to pull together all these tendencies to separation, to pull them together into some intention.

MOYERS: To follow some path.

CAMPBELL: I think so. The nation has to have an intention somehow to operate as a single power.

Back to March 1967 “The Medium is the Massage": “Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.” — Marshall McLuhan

https://www.themediumisthemassage.com/the-book/

Back To Year 1985
July 3, 1985

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. It has been translated into eight languages and sold some 200,000 copies worldwide.

Back To Year 1985
July 3, 1985

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. It has been translated into eight languages and sold some 200,000 copies worldwide.

Back to Year 1992

21 DOGE Staffers Resign as They Refuse to ‘Dismantle Critical Public Services’

“We have devalued the singular human capacity to see things whole in all their psychic, emotional and moral dimensions, and we have replaced this with faith in the powers of technical calculation.” ― neil postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992

Back to Year 2014 BBC

"Surkov turned Russian politics into a bewildering, constantly changing piece of theater. He sponsored all kinds of groups, from neo-Nazi skinheads to liberal human rights groups. He even backed parties that were opposed to President Putin." - December 31, 2014, BBC

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

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 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 almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, year 1985

YouTube video introduction :

Back to YouTube video: 8,859 views January 21, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETUGwC9jXCM

Thank you!