There is no Meaning
“No meaning to what?” You may ask. The answer is “No meaning to anything!” Stated this way, it is clearly not acceptable. But making it acceptable is easy – and is done all the time.
I am re-reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. And marveling how easy (even entertaining) it is to read. And marveling at how easily it has been ignored. The chapter about news shows should have won him a Pulitzer Prize. Because it about the lack of meaning in the News.
It amazes me how much people like their News. When I mentioned once to a co-worker once that I didn’t watch them, she was shocked. “Don’t you want to know what is going on?” She said.
I said nothing, because there was nothing to say. TV watchers believe in a fantasy world they think is real. And nothing I can say will change that.
And the News has one implicit message “There is no meaning to any of this!” A message its viewers accept without question. It has made acceptable the unacceptable (very easily) by the simple procedure of showing a series of unrelated videos in rapid succession. The viewers just sit there, with their mouths wide open – amazed by what they see – with no time to think at all. Having learned nothing – but convinced they have learned everything.
In their minds, they are the same thing.
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