What Cha Laughing At?

Postman is trying to display that we don’t think anymore.  All we look for in life is entertainment so we can laugh, he says "For in the end, he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking."  It’s not bad that we laugh and want to be entertained, but we want to know what we are laughing at because most of the time people don’t realize what they are watching or listening to they just watch or listen because it’s funny.  But even though it’s funny, is it God pleasing? That’s the hard part for us to find something that is useful to watch or listen to because half the shows on TV and the radio stations are useless junk.  So in the end Postman and the Brave New World want to tell us is that we should start analyzing and thinking about our so called entertainment and know what we are watching and listening to.

To Speak or Not To Speak

In this whole experience of not talking on Friday I intended to not talk AT ALL, but of course it was very hard and slipped up many times.  It was especially frustrating when I would try to draw or act it out and no one could guess what it was.  One especially hard experience was trying to communicate in the office because every single office aide was in AP Language, so no one could talk.  Which in turn meant no one could answer the phones.  But Mrs. P and Mrs. LeFevre were both very considerate in trying to understand what we were trying to say.  Along with the office aide experience it was really tough watching other people talk and not being able to say anything because talking is what I love to do!  This loss of talking was very difficult for me and has shown me that talking is very important in the way I live my life because how else would I be able to portray how I feel without speaking?!  This whole experience has shown me the importance of spoken language.

Out With the Old and In With the New?

Neil Postman mentions many famous sayings in the video that define our life today.  One of those stuck out to me one that Henry David Thoreau said, “All our inventions are an improved means to an unimproved end”.  I think that quote is very much true in our world today.  We are always looking for something new to improve our lives and those improvements will never stop or be good enough we are always looking for the next big thing.  In Chapter 1 Neil Postman mentions how spoken language will not be used any longer because we are changing the way we interact with people for example in the book he mentions smoke signals was the first used communication and with the technology today we don’t have to wait anymore or even talk to someone we can just use texts to let them know what is happening.  For example, instead of going upstairs and telling my brother to come downstairs, I just sent him a quick text message to come down because it’s just easier…it’s really sad to say.  But, with this new “improvement” we are losing the vital way of communicating which will lead to one day as mentioned in the video we will just become pets of our computers.  We won’t communicate with the outside world and soon enough mentioned in the video we will be talking to nonliving objects such as doorknobs and toasters. 

Along with the improvements in the technologic world, the video also mentions supposed improvements of humans by cloning.  This cloning idea has made our outlook on life and the way God made us as unimportant and all we rely on is improving our health and the way we look.  These clones will be at our use when we need a kidney or some other body part that doesn’t work anymore.  With this idea of cloning to improving our health parallels our thinking that looks are more important than the way we are which is mentioned in the book he says “Those without camera appeal are excluded from addressing the public about what is called the news of the day.  Those with camera appeal can command salaries exceeding one million dollars a year.”  This quote shows that what matters in life is less important as long as we look good.  On TV we have shows that our based around plastic surgery and they can only be happy as long as they are what they think is perfect and they do whatever they can to be perfect.   This way of life isn’t improving anything it’s just showing that the important things in life like the way God made us isn’t really important and we need clones and plastic surgery so we can improve our health and looks.