This 40-year-old book describes our present perfectly.

Recently, I often find myself stunned when I follow political discussions—especially across the Atlantic, but also here in our own region. I often wonder how we actually ended up here.

Everything feels like a show. A lot of noise. A lot of emotions. Hardly any substance. And yet the topics are important.

It reminded me of a book I read years ago. Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in 1985 by Neil Postman. It’s old, but it describes today’s situation perfectly.

Its central thesis is this:
It is not the content that determines how we think, but the medium through which it is communicated.

Every medium has its own internal logic.
Books encourage calm, logical thinking and patience. You read, reflect, and stay with an argument.Television, on the other hand, thrives on images, speed, and emotion. It has to entertain.

But when entertainment becomes the primary goal, what we talk about—and how we talk about it—inevitably changes.

Postman illustrates this with two well-known visions of the future:
George Orwell feared a world in which people would be oppressed through violence and control.
Aldous Huxley feared a world in which people would voluntarily stop thinking—because they were constantly distracted and entertained.

We are closer to Huxley.
We are not controlled through violence. We allow ourselves to be distracted.

His perspective on politics is particularly interesting. He shows how political debates changed with the arrival of television.

In the past, political debates lasted for several hours. The famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the 19th century lasted up to eight hours. Yet people were able to follow them. They listened and thought along.

Then television arrived. Suddenly it was no longer the argument that mattered most, but the performance. In the TV debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, radio listeners found Nixon more convincing. Television viewers, however, favored Kennedy—because he looked better and appeared more charismatic and likable.

Since then, it is often not the person with the best ideas who wins, but the one who comes across best.

Postman saw the same problem in the media and in education.

News arrives as isolated headlines—without context, without background. We are informed, but we do not understand the connections.

Learning, too, is increasingly expected to be primarily entertaining. The keyword is “edutainment.” Recently, a client asked me at the beginning of a workshop: “So, how are you planning to entertain us?”

Postman’s warning is that a society that turns everything into entertainment gradually loses its ability to engage in serious discussion.

Democracy then does not die through violence—but through indifference.

Postman wrote about television. Today we have social media, feeds, reels, likes, and constant stimulation.