Amusing Myself to Death

    I finished the books Amusing Ourselves to Death and Brave New World and when I finished, I could make the connection between the two books. Neil Posman uses Huxley's work many times throughout the novel and I didn't understand at first what Postman meant. I read Neil Postman's work first, so that didn't really help the fact. Especially the last chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death, I finally understood what Postman's point was in including Huxley's work. Can the government really take away our freedom to think for ourselves? Or is the television doing the job for us, having a ton of information that was considered by Postman as irrelevant. We concentrate on things that makes us happier and happier but without change. Huxley's society is a society where everyone is happy but with the inability to think for themselves and pleasure themselves constantly. Would you rather be happy, or informed?
   Is it possible we could be spiraling down a slide of further political discourse in 2016? Postman makes it very clear in the book that we are in a state of political discourse but is the television really responsible for it? Or are we responsible? Postman throughout the book was bashing the television and it's negative effects most of the time, but could it be the people that are throwing random information every day? I mean, it isn't like we're in Huxley's society, we have the choice to participate in watching television and the actors have a choice in participating on the show.