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The Huxleyan Warning

The Huxleyan Warning. -Carly Handy. Chapter 11. The spirit of a culture may be shriveled in two ways: 1. the Orwellean , where culture becomes a prison; 2 . the Huxleyan , where culture becomes a burlesque. . Chapter 11.

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The Huxleyan Warning

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  1. The Huxleyan Warning -Carly Handy

  2. Chapter 11 • The spirit of a culture may be shriveled in two ways: • 1. the Orwellean, where culture becomes a prison; • 2. the Huxleyan, where culture becomes a burlesque.

  3. Chapter 11 • Huxley teaches that in an the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than one who exudes suspicion and hate. • In a Huxleyean prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice; instead, we watch him, by our choice. There is no need for gates or wardens or Ministries of Truth

  4. Chapter 11 • Public consciousness has not yet assimilated the point that technology is ideology. • Americans believe that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement -- and not everyone thinks America is in the danger Postman proposes

  5. Chapter 11 • When cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes baby-talk, when a people become an audience and their public business is a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk -- and culture-death is a clear possibility. • The ideology happening in America is an unintended consequence of a dramatic change in the mode of public conversation. We have a way of life with a set of relations among people and ideas about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no opposition -- only compliance.

  6. Postman solutions to combat the influence of television on American culture • 1. we have to learn what television is. And the reason is that there has been no worthwhile discussion, let alone wide spread public understanding, of what information is and how it gives direction to a culture • 2. Make programs about how TV ought to be viewed and that ask what TV is doing to our culture. • 3. Rely on schools [and education] to ask the question: "How can we use education to control TV?" (It is an ackowledged task of schools to assist the young how to interpret the symbols of their culture.)

  7. Chapter 11 • Citing Huxley, Postman says: we are in a race between education and disaster -- and need to understand the politics and epistemology of media.

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