When I started reading Amusing Ourselves to Death, a passage caught my attention as it could summarize one of the points why Postman wrote this book: “Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right” (Foreword xx).
While I was reading the book, I always keep in mind that passage and I always judge the points of Postman if his ideas are truly Huxleyan, not Orwellian. The point of Postman as how media and entertainment seems to corrupt the thoughts, words, and actions of the society does show how what the society loves, the media and entertainment, truly ruined the society. Although one question confused me: as people start reading or finished reading the book and they would see and know what the media and entertainment have done and could still be doing to our society, wouldn’t the people, including us, start to have some hatred to the media and entertainment? This could show that Orwell’s prophecy about what we hate will ruin us can have a possibility as people, like us, start to see that the things we love, like media and entertainment, have negative effects to our community, and this can cause some hatred to these things.
-Johnnel Fajardo
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