# A Prophet: On Amusing Ourselves To Death Pt. 1.1
Published: 2025-08-27
Canonical: https://journal.xiaotianfanx.com/journal/a-prophet-on-amusing-ourselves-to-death-pt-1-1

The book has been on my to-read list for centuries. While it matters not to ramble about why I haven't read it until now, it is indeed a timely input for me.  	After completing  the last "journal,"   I have been largely reflecting on the very writing, making use of LLMs' unparalleled attention to trace my own history of thoughts, and reading even more about the big names from (Leo) Strauss (not Levi Strauss, the structuralist, mentioned by Postman) and Kojeve to Wittgenstein,  Nietzsche,   Derrida , and Deleuze. One of the pros (or cons, depending on the perspective switched to) of being a half postmodernist (although "involuntarily," as I call myself) is that all of them speak to me, but none of them could possibly "convert" me.  	The reason I'm bringing this up in this context is that, one, I realized my attitude towards Postman (and his theory/argument) is indeed falling into the pattern I just described—some agreement, but never all or fixed, thus making it difficult for me, as it usually happens to me, to take a stance, and, two, I did find Postman's theory resonates with the lineage of thoughts (if any) I was engaging with.  	In fact, I believe we are still too early to get to the "final argument" of Postman, as Pt. 1.1 mostly works to build the foundational "metaphor" for his later arguments. Therefore, there are actually at least two things that need to be addressed: one, whether the medium is metaphor and whether entertainment is the new God—a positive judgment to be made—and two, whether television culture is a "bad" one with, at least as many as he implies, cons—a normative judgment.  	While I'd love to go on and on on either of the questions, I'll try to throw some "answers" now as a challenge to myself. And the answer is: The first is true, and the second is true and false.  	Still, just to go through my rationale a little bit: for the first to be true, the most straightforward "evidence" is the very reality we both observe and experience these days—from the internet, smartphones, and social media to TikTok and generative AI—although I have no right to judge whether the 80s or the television culture was exactly like he described, it is more than obvious to conclude, at least for our era, that his first claim is true. Aside from that, it is almost impossible for me not to refer to Wittgenstein's early AND later views on language (such that how language "is" the world vs. how language games work inside forms of life), as well as structuralism AND poststructuralism (such that Postman set off from a structural viewpoint: “our media are our metaphors,” and metaphors generate the content of culture, but also later accepts that meaning is mediated and that “writing”/inscription changes what counts as truth), and Kuhn's paradigm shift (as a new metaphor replaced the old in Postman's storytelling).  	It seems to me that Postman, writing in the 80s while exposed largely to postmodernist views and "involuntarily" and positively adopting/accepting many of the positive descriptions (such as the generation/shift of truth), was, normatively, an anti-postmodernist who rejected relativism by arguing some media are better for truth‑seeking than others. This modernist perspective, somehow, reminded me of Leo Strauss (although I'm pretty sure that Postman was in our modern-postmodern cohort that Strauss criticized). This sense had accumulated bit by bit during my reading and reached its peak when I researched a bit about his later works, including  Building a Bridge to the 18th Century  (1999), in which he urged reviving Enlightenment habits (history, rhetoric, reason) in the face of digital hype.  	In a nutshell, I would possibly call him the "modernist Strauss"—both genuinely and ironically. And that being said, thus I do agree with his positive judgement on his era and ours, but only half agree with the second normative one.  	Before wrapping this up, where, then, is he wrong, or at least overstating, and where does he need an update? First, in tying too much of the diagnosis to "television" as such. What corrodes discourse now is less visuality per se than the attention‑market architecture—ad funding, algorithmic personalization, A/B‑tested arousal, whatever you name them. That is a political economy (or good-or-bad capitalism practice, as Postman put it), not merely a form. Some of the most serious reasoning today happens in media other than typography (or written material in general)—long‑form podcasts, three‑hour video essays, etc.—the same networked stack that also powers TikTok. Indeed, even Postman hinted at this when he distinguished technology from medium and noted that the same device can be “so used” as to mean something different in different cultures. Second, his print‑leaning hierarchy underrates genuinely cognitive visual forms—diagrams, simulations, interactives—and overstates the inevitability that images trivialize; writing CAN be shallow, and well‑designed audiovisual pedagogy can deepen understanding. On top of that, his frame is resolutely American, evidently with the abundance of American culture memes in his writing; different media regimes and classroom cultures yield different equilibria—the same “television” can be a different medium elsewhere, which, again, he himself acknowledged.  	So how would I "judge" him? For now, using his own words, maybe the answer would be a "prophet." I, honestly, have no feud with prophets—Plato, Strauss, Nietzsche, or Minsky (with his connectionist vs. symbolic view, if we need a more "tech" example here), etc., are all prophets to me. But it is exactly because they are prophets who bring us gullible (Postman's term) persons mesmerizing theories, solutions, etc., that I suspect them as I enjoy them. And presumably, I don't think I will be changed in the near future.  	*Ironically, I always feel that I have an "OCD" on "ending strong," even with these personal journals/reflections. And I've just realized I did it again. On the one hand, I would say there's nothing wrong. On the other hand, it is indeed proof of my mind/writing's being institutionalized by some unconscious structural requirement here and there, even if many times, most of my writings simply follow the whimsical flow. Writing with a lot of references to big names and big theories is "easy." Coming up with a plausible "strong ending" is easy. But the harder thing (for me and I believe many) is never realizing or saying it out loud. (See? I'm doing it again.)