In chapter three of “Amusing Ourselves To Death” by Neil Postman, he begins to go back to the founding of the Americas. A time where literacy prevailed throughout the colonies with the help of the invention of the printing press. Postman believes that Colonial America was a period of high rational thought with literacy as popular, as modern-day sports games today. However, he claims that with the introduction of television, present-day society has become more and more separated from our history. With the spread of entertainment becoming a main purpose in our everyday lives and literacy on a large scale decline. Postman’s argument on television made me begin to think. Why is it necessarily a bad thing that televised culture is causing us to split from our past? Our very founding was based on ideas of racial and religious superiority, which led to the mass killing of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans in the 18th century. Instead, why not focus on the present, in creating a country that abides by the statement of the Land of the Free, something not known in the beginning of our founding.
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