Postman Prompt Best Of…

How will society change in the future? What will we as a community be like in say 10, 20, 30 years. Huxley vs. Orwell shows two sides on how they portray the world will be in the future. While Huxley says that people will be to distracted to care about really anything, Orwell says that the government is going to affect our future and what we can and can’t do. Even though their opinions are different one thing they agree on is that it’s going to kill us.

-Emma Karsten

Recently, I have stumbled upon the writings of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell while sitting in Honors English. After reading both of their greatest works, I have noticed a trend. This said trend shows what both of their ideas are when it comes to controlling the minds of people. These ideas explain that people can either be controlled by fear, as shown in George Orwell’s “1984”, or through pleasure, as shown in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”. After reading the inserts with the two colliding ideas of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, I have concluded that people are more easily controlled with pleasure as shown in “Brave New World.”

-Thomas Wiley

Huxley’s view (at this point in time) seems more likely to occur in our image-based, technology-obsessed society. While in the 1960’s, a tyrannical government seemed more sinister than the ideas presented in Huxley’s work and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, times have evolved. Our advances in technology and media may be our downfall.

-Kayla Foat

What I disagree with from Postman’s argument is his claim that because we distract ourselves, we don’t receive information on news and global issues. Technology has only increased our ability to receive news about the government, global issues, and news within our cities and communities. However, I will say that this kind of news being accessible at all times has its disadvantages as well. When people hear, read, or see about some of the tragedies happening in the world, they distract themselves with more technology. In addition, people are willing to accept whatever they are told from these sources, without thinking for themselves or determining the bias of the source.

-Macy Glover

In F451 the society oppressed themselves to do just what Huxley feared. Montag is the only one wanting to escape the disturbing world they live in. He knows he put himself in the place to think books were a terrible thing, nobody made him.

-Taylor Harris

He believes that educational and political ideas are being washed away by the amusement of technology. But when I look around today I see the free flow of ideas everywhere. Technology does not prohibit our ideas, it only creates more. 20 years ago a political discussion was between two adults in the same room. Now it can be thousands of people from all backgrounds speaking on one platform. 20 years ago a random teenager had very little ways to become involved with the issues of society. Now that teenager can share his voice for anyone that would like to see it.

-Samuel Butler

We are also slowly losing the value of great literature and art because it is all accessible from our handheld devices. As Postman tells the reader, “Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one…Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism…Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” Siding with Huxley would mean you are one of the few people who understand how quickly our society as a whole is spinning down the drain to be flushed out into that “sea of irrelevance”.

-Haley Royer

Huxley’s view on what would ruin society was and is an extremely accurate one. He believed that people would live and lead themselves to their own destruction by their utter infatuation with technology, media, and other essentially irrelevant things. Postman showed Huxley’s argument that “… people would come to love their oppressions, to adore the technologies that undo the capacities to think.” People’s oppression is the media and television. These are the sources of entertainment that take up hours of the day, take up days of the year. Society wastes so much time consumed with such activities that they dismiss their ability to think. Not necessarily lose it, but forget how to.

-Michaela Turney

Neil Postman’s prediction in Amusing Ourselves to Death has not come into full effect, but a minority of people contradict it. He prophesied a world with an overwhelming amount of information, brought on by the people and the things they love, will lead to the submission of the populous. The first part of that prediction has come true and is undeniable. Today’s population has a constant source of information, an amount that is too much to digest. 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute. This leaves us with an important question on the second part of his prediction, “are we there yet?”

-Hannah Lewis

Huxley had an accurate prediction of what life would be now, but only in some instances. It’s true that people are persuaded by pleasure. Modern-day this often plays into technology: a fast, easy pleasure most can access. This leads new generations to not care about books or practical activities off the screen. We go home after a long day and sit and scroll through our devices for hours. I am victim to this and my peers are as well. It’s shown in Fahrenheit 451 as Mildred sits in front of her TV or with music for days on end. The catch with this, as shown in Mildred neglecting Montag, is that we can get so caught up in technology that we don’t pay as much attention to the world around us as we did when we had less technology at our fingertips.

-Erin Stenson

I qualify both Orwell’s and Huxley’s notions. The future is now, it is tomorrow, it is next year and next decade. It all seems so fast, and it never slows. While Huxley’s ideas are true in some parts of the world (i.e. the United States)Orwell’s are true in others (i.e. North Korea), providing great divide and the need for more information. Information is what keeps the world running as smoothly as it possibly can (which, now considering, isn’t very smoothly at all), whether this information be from books or magazines or news or documentaries. The information the general first-world citizen may be wanting isn’t necessarily the information that will keep the world progressing, it’s not applicable to serious world issues. And we’ve lost sight of that. There is a fine line between what needs to be news and what is entertainment.

-Emma Johnson

In Postman’s forward, he states something from the author Aldous Huxley. In Huxley’s book, he thinks that the truth will be “drowned in a sea of irrelevance”. In today’s society, that has come true. We open the news app on our phones, or search through twitter, where there are so many sides to the story, but only certain stories have the truth we want. People write stuff that might not even be related to the topic, but, readers take it as the truth. They seek it.

-Libbie Winkelman

I think that we can sometimes be desperate for entertainment and for something to fill up our time yet we don’t ever want to actually do anything.

-Abbigail Gunter

Postman is a realist and a pessimist, as is Huxley, while Orwell is a realist and an optimist. He believes humanity would not be so bold, so undone that it would throw itself away and that is a thought that comes from someone who can pick out the good things from such horrible hands of fate.

-Mya Wood

We love our technology but as a society we have become so engaged in it that sometimes we forget what’s real. It has become a creator of destruction instead of beauty.

-Robert Wimpey

Postman’s claim that Huxley was more right than Orwell is proven today by the fact that I am writing this response on a computer. A computer that I use for any given class, every day. Beside my computer lies my phone. Another object that I use every day for more than the recommended amount of time. The problem is not that I am using these tools. The problem is how much of our time they consume.

-Maeve McNaughton

Media is a cascading waterfall of useless, packed-full content: celebrities, advertisement, flashing lights and beckoning entertainment abound. Humans, like moths to a light, mindlessly flock to the easy stimulation. So much so, we hardly notice the world around us.

-Jordan Burns

George Orwell feared hate. He feared the people with power. Aldous Huxley feared love. He feared the comfort zone. He feared not the people with the power but the choice that is made once people are given distractions. […] If society is on the same side as its destroyer isn’t that 1,000 times more dangerous than just having rules set in place for the people?

-Holly Barney