Sublime

Where do our notions of mind come from if not from metaphors generated by our tools?

Every television program must be a complete package in itself. No previous knowledge is to be required.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books,” Neil Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But

Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure.

Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?

This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture.