Neil Postman: Fear Vs. Happiness

Neil Postman: Fear vs. Happiness

When the World Trade Center collapsed, the world was overcome with fear. Now, people fear that they could no longer live their lives the way they used to, oblivious of the dangers around them. People fear that there were not enough security measures being taken to ensure their safety, and began to live a life sheltered as much as possible from all evils. People hate to be afraid. As Orwell believed, what we hate has the potential to ruin us. On the other side of the spectrum, we as a global community love technological advances. The new iPod Video keeps us entertained with music and movies on-the-go, television news beats reading the newspaper any day, and going to the mall 5 minutes away? Cars are the way to go. As Neil Postman puts it, we have come to adore these developments that ultimately, "undo [our] capacities to think." As Huxley prophesized, what we love can potentially ruin us. Postman's assertion made back in 1985 is in vain. As we can clearly see today, modern society has managed to fulfill both prophesies; only making our world seem more corrupt than either author could have imagined.

The kind of world Orwell predicted when he wrote 1984 was not that far from what even modern society turned out to be like. Postman claims that Orwell "warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression." There are people out there that do not mind the modernized Big Brother in the form of the CCTV camera that is out there watching their every move, or the phone-tapping Bush administration. Or the unnecessarily long lines at the airport because everyone has been asked to remove all liquids or gels from their bags and now their shoes which must be taken off as well. People tolerate many more things in the name of safety now, especially government-sponsored projects because they feel that they are powerless to take any precautions of their own. Have we become a sloth society that believes everything that is fed to us because we find no reason to question the government? Perhaps. That is the price that we have to pay for a sense of security. Freedom of Speech. Because now, heaven forbid should you oppose what the mainstream believes, you just might as well ask to be treated like those terrorists out there that they are trying to capture in the first place. There seem to be fewer and fewer Winston Smith's in the world today, the kinds of people that would refuse to wear their teacher name tags just because they can, against Bobby G's wishes, but just because it's easier to comply with what the majority believes. Postman's assertions aren't wrongÐ'--Orwell's warning is just as relevant today. Should people fail to realize that they have a right to freedom of speech, the government will be able to get away with more and more, until we become like a society dangerously close to Oceania.

Huxley, on the other hand, believes that