"I don't think it's off-base to say that this is an attack on the current state of society - the oft-repeated wail that capitalism and the opportunities it has brought (including technology) has made us all a despicable group of hedonistic thrill seekers."
Why just "capitalism"? I think it's way too broad
Capitalism without civil society (in republican understanding), perhaps. It's still very general
"Let's consider the bottom 55% - the kind of people whose chief pleasures in our Brave New World may be TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect spelling in text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, etc. - they're not massively intellectual."
No, but Postman argues that they used to make more intensive use of their brains in the "print era".
Right now I can't find the full text to copy and paste the relevant excerpt here, but I googled up a summary of his point:
"Before going into the details of how and why this is, Postman takes us back to the 19th century and uses the
debates between Lincoln and Douglas to illustrate the vast gaping chasm between discourse as it was then and
how it is now. The famous debates between Lincoln and Douglass each lasted three hours long, each devoted to
one issue, and divided between an hour of speech, an hour and a half of response, and a half-hour rebuttal. What
makes this even more striking is that these debates were actually shorter than most normal debates of the time!
Crowds would gather around these two men and listen to them speak at length about one subject, carefully
constructing logical arguments and parsing through each others’ claims in true analytical fashion. The 19th century
mind was habituated to a literary form of oratory, which unlike pictures and film has propositional content—one
can say of it that it is either true or false, which is not the case when it comes to images. Even advertising was
purely literary, designed to appeal to the understanding as opposed to desire."
My point is that there is no way to viably change the status quo - the merits of doing so are irrelevant. We should accept this and not spend our time trying to change others, or wishing they were different, but rather channel our own energies into things constructive for our own time on this earth.
To say that there is no way is rather arbitary. If people have always seeked to maximise happiness etc., then the status quo can't be solely the result of that
Why just "capitalism"? I think it's way too broad
Capitalism without civil society (in republican understanding), perhaps. It's still very general
"Let's consider the bottom 55% - the kind of people whose chief pleasures in our Brave New World may be TV, alcohol, taking selfies, incorrect spelling in text messages, Facebook, Instagram, Candy Crush, etc. - they're not massively intellectual."
No, but Postman argues that they used to make more intensive use of their brains in the "print era".
Right now I can't find the full text to copy and paste the relevant excerpt here, but I googled up a summary of his point:
http://www.kemstone.com/Nonfiction/Politics/Amusing.htm
"Before going into the details of how and why this is, Postman takes us back to the 19th century and uses the debates between Lincoln and Douglas to illustrate the vast gaping chasm between discourse as it was then and how it is now. The famous debates between Lincoln and Douglass each lasted three hours long, each devoted to one issue, and divided between an hour of speech, an hour and a half of response, and a half-hour rebuttal. What makes this even more striking is that these debates were actually shorter than most normal debates of the time! Crowds would gather around these two men and listen to them speak at length about one subject, carefully constructing logical arguments and parsing through each others’ claims in true analytical fashion. The 19th century mind was habituated to a literary form of oratory, which unlike pictures and film has propositional content—one can say of it that it is either true or false, which is not the case when it comes to images. Even advertising was purely literary, designed to appeal to the understanding as opposed to desire."