Upon reading the first
chapter of Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman I realized that the book
is going to be heavily based on American culture in regards to technology. I noticed
this as Postman began the first chapter by establishing how different cities
are radiating the American spirit, like Boston the center of political
radicalism or Chicago the city that symbolizes the industrial energy in America
or even Las Vegas the city of entertainment. This brought up the reasonable debate
of whether Postman will mention how technology has reshaped other cultures and
nations other than America.
Something else that caught my attention in the first
chapter and that I thought was really interesting is the ideology that the President
of the united states today cannot be fat. This idea of Postman’s made me
realize something that I barely noticed before. Indeed none of our recent presidents
tend to be overweight. Although this might be out of the focus of the book but
does the world today really focuses more on what is on the inside or the outside?
Although the world has continuously reminded us to not judge a book by its cover, it contradicts itself by doing exactly what it had admonish us not to do. Every media you look at will display a face or body of an attractive male or female. Whether it is a news broadcasting program, a movie, or a commercial, all the cast members hired have an appealing trait to them. I guess we can all say we've contributed into this deleterious pattern. We go to the movies to watch Transformers because it's a good movie... or to see Megan Fox or Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. We went to theaters to see Magic Mike because we wanted to watch a comedy... or because we wanted to see Channing Tatum. Nevertheless, these are our ways of "amusing ourselves to death." Having an attractive president only shows how much we can rely on looks these days.
ReplyDeleteI believe that our society has come to judge a persons souly on their apearence. In my opinion, we, as a society are superficial. Beautiful people are hired to play roles in movies or tv shows but you will never see an unatractive person hired unless they are hired to play the role of and ugly person. When it comes to books they always tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but that's exactly what I do.
ReplyDeleteIn order for me to chose a book to read, I select the book with the best apearence and assume a it's a good book because it's the most attractive with an alluring cover and I never stop to look at the contents. Whereas the ugly book, with the unatractive cover, would not even be considered. Isn't that what we do? We automatically judge people by their appearance without even looking at their content.
Even though that is a strange way to bring up the subject about being judged by your looks, I do like what you’re saying. Even though it is a question, it seems more like a one sided answer. I believe that it is pretty obvious that our world today goes upon the looks of a person instead of who they really are. It is shown anywhere you look being either racism or any type of discrimination. Even though I don’t like to say it and know people disagree with this, the only reason our president today was elected was because of his race. No one cared to look at his credentials or anything else about him, he was only voted into office because of his looks. His competitor was taken out only because in the people’s eyes he was old but no one cared to look at his story of being a war hero.
ReplyDeleteEveryone judges the book by its cover all the time. No matter who you are, you have been decimated towards someone or a group of people in your life. The world we live in today isn’t as glamorous as some people try to make it out as.