Over the past few years, I have posted reviews for two books by Chris Martin: Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media and The Wolf in Their Pockets: 13 Ways the Social Internet Threatens the People You Lead. Both of these books examine how social media (or the social internet) affects us (and, in the case of “church leaders,” the people in their churches). Although social media has only been around for twenty years or so, the author frequently cited a book that was published in 1985, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by Neil Postman. I finally got around to reading this book for myself.
Postman’s book dealt with how television affected public discourse. As Martin explained in his books, social media has done the same thing, but at a much larger scale. So Postman’s book, although it is now forty years old, can help us understand how television (and now the internet and social media) affect the way we understand the world around us.
From the book’s description:
Originally published in 1985, Neil Postman’s groundbreaking polemic about the corrosive effects of television on our politics and public discourse has been hailed as a twenty-first-century book published in the twentieth century. Now, with television joined by more sophisticated electronic media—from the Internet to cell phones to DVDs—it has taken on even greater significance. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a prophetic look at what happens when politics, journalism, education, and even religion become subject to the demands of entertainment. It is also a blueprint for regaining control of our media, so that they can serve our highest goals.
For many, empathy is considered an unquestionably positive virtue. Yet in a new book provocatively titled The Sin of Empathy, author Joe Rigney challenges that assumption. In it, he argues that empathy is very different from the Biblical concept of compassion. In fact, he suggests that our culture has distorted compassion and created “empathy” as a justification for sinful and destructive behaviors. He described the pressure to conform to this counterfeit of compassion as living “under the progressive gaze.”
Much has been said about the changing religious landscape in our culture over the last several years. Society as a whole is becoming less religious. Among those who continue to practice religion, many are attending worship services less frequently. There is a rising number of “nones” – those whose religion is “nothing in particular.” This has led to the coining of a new term to refer to those who are leaving their churches. They are the “dechurched.”
Last year I reviewed a book by Chris Martin – Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media – about how social media affects us and how we can avoid its pitfalls. Since I finished that book, I’ve been recommending it to others (
In our modern culture, nearly everyone we meet has a phone in their pocket and/or a computer in their home (and likely more digital devices than that). Anyone reading this will be reading it on a screen. Anymore, this is simply the easiest and quickest way to access information and see the content we are interested in.
This book is about restoring a sense of community in the local church. While many churches do a good job at engaging in Scriptural worship and following the New Testament pattern for their organization and work, the sense of community is missing in many places. Being part of a local church ought to mean being a bigger part in one another’s lives.
The internet is arguably (and I would say almost definitely) the most significant technological advancement in the history of mankind. Yet as it is still relatively new, we are still learning how to use it. There are many ways we can use the internet for good, but there are also a lot of negatives that it has introduced to our lives and the world around us.
