In his seminal book Amusing Ourselves to Death [1985], Neil Postman wrote,

“[George] Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in [Aldous] 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.”

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information; Huxley feared those who would give us so much information we’d be reduced to passivity and egoism. This is truer today than ever. Sociologists who thought that the Internet would somehow bring everyone together in a new era of enlightenment and global cooperation have proven conclusively wrong.

The Truth is clearly out there – to the point of overload. Today’s media consumer is so overwhelmed by information; their only desire now is to escape into trivialities and banality.

In this way, most people are clearly passive consumers who are happily transfixed by whatever ‘shiny object’ is dangled before them. Their ability to think critically has been destroyed by social media and the regressive public school system.

Neil Postman would argue that we currently have a nation of citizens who are not really informed; but who are instead “emotionally invested” in all manner of disinformation. He used this term to describe the way social media encourages a focus on emotional responses rather than rational thought or intellectual engagement.

Postman wrote: “Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.” He was right on the money; although to a certain extent this situation has been foisted upon us by the dictates of The Market.

Appealing to the lowest common denominator is the one constant throughout the history of American media, especially television [which was the dominant media in Postman’s day…].

George Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.

Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

It is clearly Huxley’s vision which has come to pass: The Truth is out there, but you’ve got to really dig through a huge mound of shit to find it…

Most people have absolutely no desire to go to that amount of trouble to fact-check anything.

Orwell feared we would become a “captive culture.”

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the “feelies,” the “orgy porgy,” and the “centrifugal bumble-puppy.”

“Bread and circuses” is what the Romans called it: keep the masses occupied with meaningless trivialities while society crumbles around them. Sadly, this is the current situation in America. We are a nation in complete denial of the reality which surrounds us, congratulating ourselves for our ignorance.

This does not bode well for the future of democracy. As Thomas Jefferson lamented, “Democracy cannot be both ignorant and free.”

Like, duh.

Back in 2011, Newsweek asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test. 29 percent couldn’t name the Vice President. 73 percent couldn’t correctly answer why we fought the Cold War. 44 percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights.

Another study showed that 30 percent of Americans still believed the sun revolves around the earth.

That was a generation ago. Those figures have probably quadrupled since then.

As the saying goes, “The best slave is the slave who thinks he is free, and the greatest fool is the fool who thinks he is a wise man…”

Today we call it cognitive dissonance.

That pretty much sums it up for America in 2025.

[Edited repost from 2014]