Anaesthetising ourselves to death

When the Orwellian 1984 arrived, said Neil Postman, people breathed a sigh of relief thinking all is well because we were not oppressed by any 'Big Brother'. But, the earlier prophetic voice of Aldous Huxley had argued in Brave New World (1932) that people would finally choose to be anaesthetised rather than face reality.

And, one of our great modern methods of anaesthetising ourselves against reality is entertainment or in Blaise Pascal's word, diversions. For Pascal, diversions were one way mankind avoids thinking about the reality facing it at death. And the most pervasive entertainment diversion of this age is television. Neil Postman said in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985),

"It is my object in the rest of this book to make the epistemology of television visible again. I will try to demonstrate by concrete example ... that television's conversations promote incoherence and triviality ... and that television speaks in only one persistent voice — the voice of entertainment. Beyond that, I will try to demonstrate that to enter the great television conversation, one American cultural institution after another is learning to speak its terms. Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. This is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago."

I am not against television per se. Rather, I fear that our uncritical watching of the magical screen is gradually by stealth squeezing us into the mold of the world by the spirit of this age and deadening us to the urgent, on-going need to be remolded in our inner lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. Non-Christian prophets warned us that this was coming but we seem to be oblivious to the juggernaut of entertainment.

We get our news through TV, our 'reality' through TV, our politics through TV, our language through TV but fail to take account of the issue that it wouldn't be on the screen if it didn't entertain. Think of all that has had to be edited out to make sure the final presentation entertains and holds our easily divertible attention. And further, don't we realise that our hearts, our inner selves are being shaped by this form of communication?

The other effect is how this addiction to entertainment works in supposedly non-entertainment spheres such as church meetings. Much complaint about these meetings pivots on the sometimes unspoken assumption that such meetings ought to entertain the faithful. I wonder whether we ever stop in our narcissistic ramblings to realise that the church service is not about us. It's a divine service because in the service we serve the divine. It's entertainment for God if one likes but our entertainment is secondary.

I am not arguing for the inherent piety of boring services because boring preachers (and others) are often afflicted with narcissism. They're boring because they won't shut up, listen to God for a change and die to self. That aside, our primary way of judging church should never be, was it entertaining? To do so, is to have fallen captive to the spirit of entertainment that now holds terrible sway over western culture.