“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

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