Toward Deeper Christlikeness in our Technological Age

The Sixth and Final Part of Our Series on Neil Postman's book Amusing Ourselves to Death

Today I’m concluding my series of reflections on Neil Postman’s classic book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, which will celebrate its 40^th anniversary this fall. You can read the previous post in this series here (and link back from it to the beginning of the series):

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Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

In the conclusion of Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman returns to a theme introduced in the book’s foreword, the contrast between the dystopias imagined by George Orwell and Albert Huxley. And again, he emphasizes his intuition that the United States is much more prone to falling into Huxley’s trap. He writes:

In America, Orwell’s prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley’s are well under way toward being realized. For America is engaged in the world’s most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the technological distractions made possible by the electric plug. This is an experiment that began slowly and modestly in the mid-nineteenth century and has now, in the latter half of the twentieth century, reached a perverse maturity in America’s consuming love-affair with television. … By ushering in the Age of Television, America has given the world the clearest available glimpse of the Huxleyian future (156).

Although we are getting a bit of a taste of an Orwellian world under the Trump regime, I think Postman’s intuition rings as true as ever in the present age of the smartphone. The trajectory of entertainment that accelerated in the age of television, as Postman exposits in this book, continues to climb over the last four decades since its publication. Polarization abounds as politics becomes a game in which one side attempts to trounce the other. Our attention has been seized by a host of online technologies, and as a result, education suffers as many children, teenagers, and adults struggle to read books. (The NY Times, for instance, reported this morning that reading skills of high school seniors are at the lowest point in decades [link is a gift article] ) Our faith is likewise reduced, as worship services become shows and as our faith increasingly becomes little more than a self-help program.

And while the pillars of politics, education, and religion are being hollowed out, we become pawns of the oligarchs who are running the technology corporations and the super-affluent politicians who serve their interests. Not only has our attention been exploited to serve their profit-hungry interests, but we also are too caught up in the political game to see that both parties in that game ultimately serve the ends of the oligarchs. What a mess we are in!

What wisdom does Postman have for a world sliding into Huxleyian dystopia?

His advice is admittedly paltry. First, he emphasizes that the Luddite option of rejecting the technology altogether cannot save us. Perhaps a few strong-willed individuals might be able to do so, but they will not have a transformative effect on our society as a whole that is obsessed with technology. “Americans,” Postman writes, “will not shut down any part of their technological apparatus, and to suggest that they do so is to make no suggestion at all” (158).

Two other recommendations made by Postman in this final chapter are worth highlighting. First, he suggests that we begin to reflect together on how we utilize technology. In the conversational spirit of this Substack, this recommendation has potential. He suggests some basic questions upon which we might reflect:

What is information? Or, more precisely, what are information? What are its various forms? What conceptions of intelligence, wisdom, and learning does each form insist upon? What conceptions does each form neglect or mock? … What is the relation between information and reason? What is the kind of information that best facilitates thinking? Is there a moral bias to each information form? What does it mean to say that there is too much information? How would one know? What redefinitions of important cultural meanings do new sources, speeds, contexts, and forms of information require? Does television, for example, give new meaning to “piety,” to “patriotism,” to “privacy”? … How do different forms of information persuade? …

These questions, and dozens more like them, are the means through which it might be possible for Americans to begin talking back to their television sets, to use Nicholas Johnson’s phrase. For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand what its dangers are (160-161).

Postman’s second compelling recommendation is that our schools might be the one hopeful place where such conversations could unfold. He’s not wildly optimistic, granting that “[Schools are] the conventional American solution to all dangerous social problems, and is, of course, based on a naive and mystical faith in the efficacy of education. The process rarely works” (162). On the other hand, he also notes that “Educators are not unaware of the effects of the television [or other technologies] on their students. Stimulated by the arrival of the computer, they discuss it a great deal – which is to say, they have become somewhat “media conscious.”

Postman concludes with an observation, borrowed from H.G. Wells “that we are in a race between education and disaster.”

So, what might it look like to embody an alternative in a society unraveling due to its longstanding obsession with technologies that serve primarily to entertain? Postman struggles to imagine an alternative, and so do I. If an alternative is possible, I’m inclined to believe that it will come from communities that are striving to follow the way of Jesus in these present times. In Part Four of this series, I made two suggestions for churches that want to embody a different way. I’ll just offer the basic thought again here, and refer you to the original post for additional reflection.

Thought #1:

We need disciplines that – following in the long history of Christian renunciation – drastically limit our reliance upon smartphones and other screen technologies.

(Note: As emphasized above, I do agree with Postman that a hard-edged Luddite approach will not be transformative, BUT I do believe that we need some practices of unplugging in order to begin to reflect on how the technology works upon us and to imagine alternative ways of living and being.)

Thought #2:

We need to revive practices of reading, not just as an alternative form of entertainment (though I believe that is a worthwhile aim), but as an alternative way of making sense of, and existing in, the world.

And in full agreement with Postman’s conclusion, I would add a third suggestion to the previous two…

Thought #3:

We need to think and talk together in our church communities (and neighborhoods and schools and workplaces) about what technology is, about how we use it and about what its dangers are.

There are so many things that our churches really need to be talking together about: how our faith relates to politics, how to extend hospitality to those on the margins of our communities, how to raise our children and form them for following Jesus in this tumultuous world, how to care for one another in an increasingly dire economic climate, and on and on. But technology is connected to (and perhaps underlies) all of these conversations and more. Just this morning, I was struck by an article in a local e-newsletter about how social media is driving gun violence among youth in our city.

And few, if any, churches are talking about the effects of technology and its dangers. (If your church is doing so, let me know, I’d love to hear more!) But not talking about the powers that dominate our world only amplifies their power over us. As David Dark argued in his extraordinary 2009 book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, we need to expand the scope of “the talkaboutable.”

Our present situation is dire: politically, economically, socially, educationally. And as we have been reminded over the course of this series, Neil Postman warned us forty years ago that technology would be a primary driving force in our decline. Although we have been diminished by our entertaining technologies, we have not yet been destroyed, and hope remains that more humane ways of living with technology will emerge. But embodying an alternative will require significant labor, conversation, and collaboration. I hope the suggestions above will orient our churches toward deeper Christlikeness in our technological age, and that as our church communities discern and explore alternative ways of being, we will bear witness to a hope that will resound throughout our neighborhoods and the world!