Two Followers of Cadmus Devoured by a Dragon, Cornelis Van Haarlem; 1588

MY HUSBAND and I were in the airport this week to fly to Florida. We were traveling there to help a relative who can’t walk much or drive anymore move north. (We packed up her car in a few hours and drove home, covering about 1,200 miles in two days, not counting the time in the air.) While we were at the boarding gate, an interview with the hideously wasted Bill Cosby appeared on the obligatory screen in the waiting area. There was a day when you could wait for a plane without being force-fed interviews with celebrities accused of drunken rape. Not anymore. After Cosby, as if to counter his bloated decrepitude, that extremely fit Indian doctor who is always advising people on how to beat the stress of life provided health tips and then there was a commercial for the dynamic and beautiful Christiane Amanpour and her stagey, mind-blowingly superficial interviews of world figures.

Everywhere one goes, it’s there. In restaurants, airports, doctors offices and hotel lobbies. You even encounter it at the gas pump. The big screen. The elated announcers. The look-a-like blondes, the nice boys, the virtuous black men, the super smart Asian women — they are your companions and advisers. Remember Muzak? This is Newzak Nation, where “news” is broadcast in public places 24 hours a day. What is 365 times 24?  You have to hear them. The entire nation is suckled at the engorged boobs of Newz, which makes the Soviet propaganda machine seem like the work of mind-control amateurs. 

Neil Postman wrote about it long ago now in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which had no significant influence at all:

What [Aldous] Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth.

We no longer have much choice in the matter, given the pervasiveness of screens. And if it’s not Newz, it’s a football game or a talk show. What accounts for the stunning proliferation of screens in public places? They are everywhere now.

They obviously serve as pacification to keep waiting people occupied. And they are obviously a vehicle for advertising. The screen in a doctor’s office may be tuned to a channel advertising nothing but pharmaceuticals. But restaurants and hotels do not have screens playing Newzak or other forms of entertainment all the time because they are gaining directly from the ads. No, the profit is there, but it’s buried and unconscious. A screen tuned to a football game or CNN says, “Things are happening here. The whole world is here.” No one wants you to encounter loneliness or emptiness because you might move onto somewhere more exciting. They are all involved — on an unconscious level – in the business of keeping you amused and child-like.

As Postman put it,

Television screens saturated with commercials promote the utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales.

In his book Pure: Modernity Philosophy and the One, Mark Anderson writes about this business of cultivating childishness:

There is a limit to the natural production of children, determined by population numbers and the resources available to sustain new generations. Yet this limitation can be overcome by inducing those whoa re not by age actual members of the youth contingent to feel, think, and act as if they are. The relevant factor is not biological age, but unconstrained unnecessary desires. The more individuals the culture-industry can persuade to retain their adolescent attitudes and behaviors into biological maturity, the broader the market for the products of popular culture.

To be nursed on Newz is to be force-fed impulsiveness, immaturity and vice. To be nursed on Newz is to be devoured by it.  There is almost no resistance to the Brave New World proliferation of screens and no concern by the government at all even though this entertainment leviathan threatens public health. Isn’t it interesting that those who are so concerned about global warming and organic food care so little about what is fed to minds? The beast continues its assault on mind and soul with seemingly no enemies at all. It chews human beings up and spits them out. Even if we hate it we are consumed by it in some ways too.

— Comments —

Mrs. T. writes:

I took my seven-year-old son to the dentist a few months back for his first cleaning. At our turn, the hygienist called us back and immediately asked if we wanted Disney or Cartoon Network. I was silent for a moment because I didn’t understand what she meant. As we entered the room she turned on a television that was positioned directly in front of the reclining patient chair. She began to turn it on but I told her it wasn’t necessary, that my son could survive a 30-minute cleaning without media entertainment.

Several weeks ago my husband and I went out for dinner. This is a treat for us. Time away from the littles to talk. However, I could barely pay attention. There were so many televisions blaring different noises, I felt attention deficit. It completely ruined the experience.

It was the same thing when we met friends at a quaint little bar during Christmas. It used to be a lovely place to meet during the holidays, but they have since installed televisions, making it hard to have a decent conversation.

It is everywhere. Waiting rooms, shopping centers, restaurants, our homes, etc. It feels incredibly invasive. And so much noise, it reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and how noise is a technique used by Satan against us. I often have the urge to wander into the woods surrounding our property and just listen. In silence.

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