Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future

Postman makes an extremely compelling argument that our best source for assistance for moral and intellectual decision-making lies in the 18th century, not the historical aberration that was the 20th century. I won't summarize the points here, if what I said above makes sense, don't delay, read this book! You won't regret it. This is a clear, concise and accurate read that entertains along the way.

Neil Postman, longtime professor and eventual chair of the department of culture and communication at New York University, sadly died in 2003 at the age of 72. Bridge is his final book, and it deals with the same universal themes found in his earlier 20-odd works: language, reason, education, childhood, and the idea of progress.

Despairing over post-modernists who claim words don't stand for anything real, he makes a case for reading and writing. Indeed, he feels if we don't come up with a meaningful narrative for our world, we're toast.

It is no accident, Postman is a huge fan of the two Thomases: Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, particularly Paine.

Note: Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and The Crisis. Common Sense sold as many as 600,000 copies, which would be equivalent to a run of 60 million copies in the United States today.

During the 18th century we were sewing the seeds for the end of monarchy and, eventually, slavery. Dr. Postman states that "men of the mind" in those heady days thought knowledge should be useful. Such Renaissance Men were known as philosophes, i.e. philosophers using their minds for great and just social causes.

Now consider the modern era, and the so-called information revolution. The pervasive imagery of video and computer media work often to undercut the logical, serial narrative form of print. Reading, books in particular, requires active intellect, constantly evaluating statements, considering context, weighing consistencies, etc.

Too often we succumb to the easier means of getting information... from perceptual streams of video images and sounds, serving to reinforce the perceptual-emotional method of awareness: "see something, have an immediate, often extreme emotion one way or the other."

For example, a large number of Americans see footage of the World Trade Center towers falling and have an immediate animosity toward Arab men. Alternative explanations to the official story, no matter how logically unassailable, are simply blocked from consideration. A society relying on emotions bred from controlled media images is Orwellian... and doomed.

Dr. Postman also has insightful observations on the loss of childhood to technology. He doesn't "rail against the machine," so much as ask questions of the necessity of every shiny new thunderpig widget that comes along:

"What is the problem to which the supersonic jet is the solution?" -- pg.43.

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Brian Wright
Copyright 2007

In _Building a Bridge to the 18th Century_, Postman raises a number of excellent questions about the issues and challenges of the post-modern age. In doing so, he tackles technology, education, and our sense of "progress."

Postman transparently states that he is not a fan of email, the internet and television. For this, the title of "luddite" (a perjorative for those who reject "modernization") initally seems appropriate. Postman addresses this and rejects it. I would agree with him on this; he is not opposed to technology per say, but rather is opposed to technology for its own sake. This argument is the basis of his book.

Essentially Postman forces us to ask, "what is the utility of the technological advances we are making?" In responding to this, Postman finds the answer in the philosophes of the 18th century - Lock, Rousseau, Diderot, Jefferson, Franklin, Voltaire - stating that without some purpose for the greater good, we end up serving technology, rather than having technology serve us.

The effects of this "unexamined life" are profound. As we read less and watch more, interact more with machines than people, and lose our sense of skepticism taking the word of experts and scientists without challenge, we are essentially returning to a "pre-Enlightened" age intellecutally reminiscient more of the middle ages than the modern age, to our misfortune.

There is much here to mentally wrestle with. The intellecutal depth of the issue made easier by the lucid writing of Postman. It is a provoking read that I recommend.

Somehow Postman has been accused of being a luddite. I'm not sure how he got theis reputation. He is certainly critical of present excesses, but as this book shows, he merely - and justly - questions current ideas that have degenerated to produce dubious advantages. he has no objections to technology or science but, he argues, there is aneed to revert to a more humanist (which also implies liberal in the good sense of the word) approaches to temper the way technology is creeping intrusively into our lives. In philosophical terms he argues against cultural relativism and its older brother deconstruction - i.e. Derrida, Lacan. in this he is joined - though he does not mention it - by several leading physicists and, indeed, Fashionable Nonsense by Sokal confirms this. Like many greek classical philosophers, from Plato to Epicurus, postman excercises healthy doubt and merely questions the present. Not all change is good. I also found the book to be very well written, erudite and humorous.

This is my third Postman book and I am still enthralled in the reading of his works. Mainly, I believe, because he writes with a particular verve that I find lacking in many of his contemporaries. His discourse covers a wide range of topics, some of them superficially, but all of them intended to support his thesis: children are losing their childhood; and meaning needs to be revived in language, education, narrative, and culture. He is iconoclastic.

Even though it is possible to read his book in a cursory manner, don't fault the easily accessible work as trite. Postman's criticism is erudite, precise and well-articulated.

I hope he doesn't stop writing. His voice needs to continue.