Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

by Neil Postman

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of [an] artificial medium.2

the mind, a garden that yearns to be cultivated.

But most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.

The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether.