In the 1985 book, Entertaining Ourselves to Death, written by Neil Postman, he postulates that the switch from mass media being print-based and transitioning to a television-based society would degrade critical thinking and significantly damage public discourse.
As technology improves, major powers find new ways to draw the attention of the population away from their focus, and towards their products and services, destroying our attention spans.
Before social media, the average person living their life didn’t care that much about attention. Now that’s changed. A recent survey in the US found that 54% of 18-34 year olds want to be social media influencers.
In the entertainment society of today, it’s more important to be entertaining than it is to be skilled; this applies to all things. Marketing now matters more than the essence of what is being marketed.
The global reality show
Skill acquisition, and being loyal to the path, matters little compared to how entertaining you are. America is entertaining itself to death, and since culture is the main export of America–the world’s most powerful empire–the rest of the world is being covered with this new societal philosophy–but it didn’t use to be like this.
The video above shows what debates used to look like before the entertainment era.
Notice each candidate is respectful, does not interrupt, name call, virtue signal, or argue; instead, they state their beliefs and their intentions as president. Both parties speak on ideas for extended periods, without cuts or production inserted to increase the entertainment value of the content. Because the populations’ attention span has yet to be eroded, a speaker can explain their ideas without interruption or distraction.
Debating wouldn’t even work in the modern age because it would be described as “too boring”, hence the concept of entertaining ourselves to death. What is the health of a society that prefers an entertaining leader to a skilled one?
Modern day debates are a farce. They are more focused on entertainment and selling commercial slots than they are focused on informing the views of opposing political candidates. Modern debates are more like football games than debates of the past; crowds cheer, boo, laugh; all reactions to entertainment.
More than a succinct point, viewers want to see someone get dunked on, which means a winner crushes the argument of the loser, which is the equivalent of “scoring” in a “debate”. This is why no one wants to debate Trump. He’s not a skilled and logical orator who can refute an argument with logic, instead he is the most entertaining. He can destroy more-educated and politically skilled opponents because he is better at entertaining, which is often at odds with being a respectable and grounded politician.
If a debate opponent of Trump orchestrates a point that blasts through a statement, all Trump has to do is entertain the audience and they’ll completely disregard a good point. Future presidents will not be elected on political merit, but the merit of how entertaining they are.
You don’t have to have any knowledge of politics to understand why hiring the most-entertaining instead of the most-skilled is a blueprint for chaos and pain. Imagine hiring a home-builder to construct your house based on their entertainment value instead of their skill value. It sounds foolish, but marketing allows this to happen all of the time.
There doesn’t seem to be a way back from this other than the populations adopting a philosophical way of living and grounding themselves emotionally so they are not controlled by emotions, but instead control their emotions and think through logic. This endeavor may be one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and may be impossible to bring to fruition.
However, you can change.
Be the example. Live correctly.