Read this article this morning, thanks to a friend.
Probably the most relevant analysis I've read in weeks.
I feel like I'm waking up from a nightmare, and one that no one around wants to see.
This is not the first time I get this feeling.
I'm terrified by our humanity. How can we tolerate this? How can we let the richest nation's new leader fan citizens from America who are coming from countries America has worked hard to destroy?
There is a march today in Paris, for those who want to, at least, gather together...
NoBanNoWall March in Paris
Here is the article, from the Guardian.
I don't know what to add, except, maybe, keep on reading!
Information, TV, films, will never replace writing and reading. Our brains have the capacity to understand the most important things without intermediaries (i.e. the media, think tanks, politicians, intellectuals).
Our brain, and our heart. This is why poetry and fiction exist. They talk to our feelings as much as to our mind.
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- «O, Wonder!
- How many goodly creatures are there here!
- How beauteous mankind is! O brave New World3!
- That has such people in't!"
- « Ô, merveille !
- Combien de belles créatures vois-je ici réunies !
- Que l'humanité est admirable !
- Ô splendide Nouveau Monde
- Qui compte de pareils habitants ! »
- - Shakespeare, The Tempest
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My dad predicted Trump in 1985 – it's not Orwell, he warned, it's Brave New World
The ascent of Donald Trump has proved Neil Postman’s argument in Amusing Ourselves to Death was right. Here’s what we can do about itOver the last year, as the presidential campaign grew increasingly bizarre and Donald Trump took us places we had never been before, I saw a spike in media references to Amusing Ourselves to Death, a book written by my late father, Neil Postman, which anticipated back in 1985 so much about what has become of our current public discourse.
At Forbes, one contributor wrote that the book “may help explain the otherwise inexplicable”. CNN noted that Trump’s allegedly shocking “ascent would not have surprised Postman”. At ChristianPost.com, Richard D Land reflected on reading the book three decades ago and feeling “dumbfounded … by Postman’s prophetic insights into what was then America’s future and is now too often a painful description of America’s present”. Last month, a headline at Paste Magazine asked: “Did Neil Postman Predict the Rise of Trump and Fake News?”
Colleagues and former students of my father, who taught at New York University for more than 40 years and who died in 2003, would now and then email or Facebook message me, after the latest Trumpian theatrics, wondering, “What would Neil think?” or noting glumly, “Your dad nailed it.”
The central argument of Amusing Ourselves is simple: there were two landmark dystopian novels written by brilliant British cultural critics – Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – and we Americans had mistakenly feared and obsessed over the vision portrayed in the latter book (an information-censoring, movement-restricting, individuality-emaciating state) rather than the former (a technology-sedating, consumption-engorging, instant-gratifying bubble).
The misplaced focus on Orwell was understandable: after all, for decades the cold war had made communism – as embodied by Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Big Brother – the prime existential threat to America and to the greatest of American virtues, freedom. And, to put a bow on it, the actual year, 1984, was fast approaching when my father was writing his book, so we had Orwell’s powerful vision on the brain.
Whoops. Within a half-decade, the Berlin Wall came down. Two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed.
“We were keeping our eye on 1984,” my father wrote. “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.”
Unfortunately, there remained a vision we Americans did need to guard against, one that was percolating right then, in the 1980s. The president was a former actor and polished communicator. Our political discourse (if you could call it that) was day by day diminished to soundbites (“Where’s the beef?” and “I’m paying for this microphone” became two “gotcha” moments, apparently testifying to the speaker’s political formidableness).
The nation increasingly got its “serious” information not from newspapers, which demand a level of deliberation and active engagement, but from television: Americans watched an average of 20 hours of TV a week. (My father noted that USA Today, which launched in 1982 and featured colorized images, quick-glance lists and charts, and much shorter stories, was really a newspaper mimicking the look and feel of TV news.)
But it wasn’t simply the magnitude of TV exposure that was troubling. It was that the audience was being conditioned to get its information faster, in a way that was less nuanced and, of course, image-based. As my father pointed out, a written sentence has a level of verifiability to it: it is true or not true – or, at the very least, we can have a meaningful discussion over its truth. (This was pre-truthiness, pre-“alternative facts”.)
But an image? One never says a picture is true or false. It either captures your attention or it doesn’t. The more TV we watched, the more we expected – and with our finger on the remote, the more we demanded – that not just our sitcoms and cop procedurals and other “junk TV” be entertaining but also our news and other issues of import. Digestible. Visually engaging. Provocative. In short, amusing. All the time. Sorry, C-Span.
This was, in spirit, the vision that Huxley predicted way back in 1931, the dystopia my father believed we should have been watching out for. He wrote:
"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".
1984 – the year, not the novel – looks positively quaint now. One-third of a century later, we all carry our own personalized screens on us, at all times, and rather than seven broadcast channels plus a smattering of cable, we have a virtual infinity of options.
Today, the average weekly screen time for an American adult – brace yourself; this is not a typo – is 74 hours (and still going up). We watch when we want, not when anyone tells us, and usually alone, and often while doing several other things. The soundbite has been replaced by virality, meme, hot take, tweet. Can serious national issues really be explored in any coherent, meaningful way in such a fragmented, attention-challenged environment?
Sure, times change. Technology and innovation wait for no man. Get with the program. But how engaged can any populace be when the most we’re asked to do is to like or not like a particular post, or “sign” an online petition? How seriously should anyone take us, or should we take ourselves, when the “optics” of an address or campaign speech – raucousness, maybe actual violence, childishly attention-craving gestures or facial expressions – rather than the content of the speech determines how much “airtime” it gets, and how often people watch, share and favorite it?
My father’s book warned of what was coming, but others have seen and feared aspects of it, too (Norbert Wiener, Sinclair Lewis, Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, David Foster Wallace, Sherry Turkle, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Edward Snowden, to name a few).
Our public discourse has become so trivialized, it’s astounding that we still cling to the word “debates” for what our presidential candidates do onstage when facing each other. Really? Who can be shocked by the rise of a reality TV star, a man given to loud, inflammatory statements, many of which are spectacularly untrue but virtually all of which make for what used to be called “good television”?
Who can be appalled when the coin of the realm in public discourse is not experience, thoughtfulness or diplomacy but the ability to amuse – no matter how maddening or revolting the amusement?
So, yes, my dad nailed it. Did he also predict that the leader we would pick for such an age, when we had become perhaps terminally enamored of our technologies and amusements, would almost certainly possess fascistic tendencies? I believe he called this, too.
For all the ways one can define fascism (and there are many), one essential trait is its allegiance to no idea of right but its own: it is, in short, ideological narcissism. It creates a myth that is irrefutable (much in the way that an image’s “truth” cannot be disproved), in perpetuity, because of its authoritarian, unrestrained nature.
“Television is a speed-of-light medium, a present-centered medium,” my father wrote. “Its grammar, so to say, permits no access to the past … history can play no significant role in image politics. For history is of value only to someone who takes seriously the notion that there are patterns in the past which may provide the present with nourishing traditions.”
Later in that passage, Czesław Miłosz, winner of the Nobel prize for literature, is cited for remarking in his 1980 acceptance speech that that era was notable for “a refusal to remember”; my father notes Miłosz referencing “the shattering fact that there are now more than one hundred books in print that deny that the Holocaust ever took place”.
Again: how quaint.
While fake news has been with us as long as there have been agendas, and from both sides of the political aisle, we’re now witnessing – thanks to Breitbart News, Infowars and perpetuation of myths like the one questioning Barack Obama’s origins – a sort of distillation, a fine-tuning.
“An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a Huxleyan,” my father wrote. “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us … [but] who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements?”
I wish I could tell you that, for all his prescience, my father also supplied a solution. He did not. He saw his job as identifying a serious, under-addressed problem, then asking a set of important questions about the problem. He knew it would be hard to find an easy answer to the damages wrought by “technopoly”. It was a systemic problem, one baked as much into our individual psyches as into our culture.
But we need more than just hope for a way out. We need a strategy, or at least some tactics.
First: treat false allegations as an opportunity. Seek information as close to the source as possible. The internet represents a great chance for citizens to do their own hunting – there’s ample primary source material, credible eyewitnesses, etc, out there – though it can also be manipulated to obfuscate that. No one’s reality, least of all our collective one, should be a grotesque game of telephone.
Second: don’t expect “the media” to do this job for you. Some of its practitioners do, brilliantly and at times heroically. But most of the media exists to sell you things. Its allegiance is to boosting circulation, online traffic, ad revenue. Don’t begrudge it that. But then don’t be suckered about the reasons why Story X got play and Story Y did not.
Third: for journalists, Jay Rosen, a former student of my father’s and a leading voice in the movement known as “public journalism”, offers several useful, practical suggestions.
Finally, and most importantly, it should be the responsibility of schools to make children aware of our information environments, which in many instances have become our entertainment environments, but there is little evidence that schools are equipped or care to do this. So someone has to.
We must teach our children, from a very young age, to be skeptics, to listen carefully, to assume everyone is lying about everything. (Well, maybe not everyone.) Check sources. Consider what wasn’t said. Ask questions. Understand that every storyteller has a bias – and so does every platform.
We all laughed – some of us, anyway – at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s version of the news, to some extent because everything had become a joke. If we wish not to be “soma”-tized (Huxley’s word) by technology, to be something less than smiling idiots and complicit in the junking of our own culture, then “what is required of us now is a new era of responsibility … giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.”
My father didn’t write those last words – our recently retired president said them in his final inaugural address. He’s right. It will be difficult. It’s not so amusing any more.
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On the march:
Press Release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 3, 2017
Contacts:
nobannowallparis@gmail.com
Leslie Wheeler, Kasey Kokenda
#NoBanNoWall March in Paris
Public march in Paris resisting President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees and immigration.
PARIS — An estimated 3,000 people will come together in front of Place du Trocadéro on Saturday afternoon from 2 to 4:30 p.m. to march in protest against US President Donald Trump’s executive order banning admission of refugees and nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
Although the order takes care not to mention Islam, it has been made clear by campaign surrogates such as Rudy Giuliani, that this executive order was drafted as a means to effectively ban Muslims from entering the United States, making good on one of Trump’s more controversial campaign promises.
As has been amply reported, this executive order was signed with very little vetting and created chaos and confusion at major American airports. Even members of Trump’s team, most notably Reince Preibus, expressed contradictory statements about the nature of the order.
Since then, protests have spread internationally and historic US allies, such as France and Germany, have spoken out against the executive order. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in a joint news conference with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel “The reception of refugees fleeing the war, fleeing oppression, is part of our duties.”
The #NoBanNoWall March in Paris will peacefully protest Trump’s executive order. The protest aims to denounce the Islamophobic and xenophobic policies of the Trump administration in a continuing international show of solidarity with immigrant, refugee, and other marginalized communities and with other protesters who have been resisting this unprecedented executive order.
It should also be noted that we are not affiliated with any organization. We are an international group of grassroots organizers.
For more information: https://www.facebook.com/
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When Trump closed the borders of the U.S. to refugees and citizens from several mainly muslim countries, he denied them the human rights our country should guarantee. These are not only refugees and new immigrants who can no longer have a safe home, but also documented workers residing in the US who now cannot leave the country to see family or loved ones around the world, in fear they will not be able to return to the home they have worked long and hard to establish. Banning people based on their birthplace, religion, race, sexuality, etc. threatens the future of the people who make our country great, as well as the citizens of the world. We will not be silent with so much at stake and WE WILL RESIST SUCH AN UNETHICAL ACT THAT DENIES ANYONE THE RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS."
Communiqué de presse:
POUR DIFFUSION IMMÉDIATE
3 février 2017
Pour plus d'informations:
nobannowallparis@gmail.com
Leslie Wheeler, Kasey Kokenda
#NoBanNoWall March in Paris
Manifestation à Paris contre le décret du président Donald Trump sur les réfugiés et l'immigration.
PARIS - Environ 3000 personnes se rassembleront devant la place du Trocadéro samedi après-midi de 14h à 16h30 afin de manifester contre le décret du président américain Donald Trump interdisant l'admission des réfugiés et des ressortissants de sept pays à majorité musulmane: l'Irak, l'Iran, la Libye, le Soudan, la Somalie, la Syrie et le Yémen.
Bien que le décret prenne soin de ne pas mentionner l'Islam, il a été précisé par des membres de sa campagne tels que Rudy Giuliani que ce décret a été conçu comme un moyen d'interdire efficacement aux musulmans d'entrer aux États-Unis, afin de tenir l'une des plus polémiques des promesses de Trump.
Comme cela a été amplement signalé, ce décret a été signé presque sans consultation et a semé le chaos et la confusion dans les grands aéroports américains. Même des membres de l'équipe de Trump, notamment Reince Preibus, ont fait des déclarations contradictoires au sujet de la nature du décret.
Depuis lors, les protestations se sont répandues à l'échelle internationale et des alliés historiques des Etats-Unis, comme la France et l'Allemagne, se sont prononcés contre le décret. Le ministre français des Affaires étrangères Jean-Marc Ayrault a déclaré lors d'une conférence de presse conjointe avec son homologue allemand Sigmar Gabriel : "L'accueil des réfugiés qui fuient la guerre, qui fuient l'oppression, ça fait partie de nos devoirs."
La manifestation #NoBanNoWall à Paris sera une protestation pacifique contre le décret de Trump. La manifestation vise à dénoncer les politiques islamophobes et xénophobes de l'administration de Trump et à exprimer notre solidarité avec les migrants, réfugiés et autres communautés marginalisées, et avec les autres manifestants qui s'opposent à ce décret sans précédent.
Nous ne sommes pas une organisation. Nous sommes un groupe international de militants de terrain.
Pour plus d’informations: https://www.facebook.com/
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En fermant les frontières des Etats-Unis aux réfugiés et aux citoyens de plusieurs pays à majorité musulmane, Trump leur a refusé les droits humains que notre pays devrait garantir. Ce n’est pas seulement aux réfugiés et aux nouveaux immigrants que la possibilité d’un chez eux sûr est niée mais aussi aux travailleurs résidant légalement aux Etats-Unis qui ne peuvent plus quitter le pays pour visiter leur famille ou leurs amis dans le monde, de peur de ne pouvoir revenir chez eux, un chez eux pour lequel ils ont travaillé longtemps et durement. Exclure des gens selon leur lieu de naissance, leur religion, leur race, leur sexualité, etc. fait peser une menace sur ceux et celles qui font la grandeur de notre pays, et pour les citoyens du monde. Nous ne nous tairons pas, alors que tant est en jeu et NOUS RÉSISTERONS À UNE ACTION SI IMMORALE QUI NIE À QUICONQUE LE DROIT À LA VIE, À LA LIBERTÉ, ET À LA RECHERCHE DU BONHEUR.
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