Recent events reminded me of Professor Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business. In 1985 Postman believed that visual communications, inspired by television, has made our world more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World – a population too amused by distractions like entertainment, leisure, and laughter to realize they have been made powerless – than George Orwell’s 1984 – a tyrannical state that bans information to keep the public powerless.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 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 feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
The larger point that Postman made was that societies are molded by technologies atop which they communicate. Oral cultures teach us to be conversational, typographic cultures teach us to be logical, televised cultures teach us that everything is entertainment and emotional. I wonder how Postman would evaluate FaceBook memes, YouTube, and social media algorithms that are built to maximize the time users spend within the application. (Derakhshan 2016)
Nicholas Carr, the author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, argues that the rise of the Intenet intensifies the move away from print culture. This move away from print even affected Carr as he confesses his own inability to concentrate after switching from physical books to online reading:
I’d sit down with a book, or a long article, and after a couple of pages my brain wanted to do what it does when I’m online: check e-mail, click on links, do some Googling, hop from page to page…the more time we spending surging, and skimming, and scanning…the more adept we become at that mode of thinking.
So What is the Big Deal?
Fire departments are typographic cultures, paper empires of logic and procedures. Many firefighters and fire officers have not “read the manual” that comes with their department, not unlike 007’s response to Q’s request in “Die Another Day” to read the manual for his new Aston Martin:
That means operational and career decisions are made without a complete understanding of the “fine print” that makes the fire department work within the jurisdiction.
The never-ending parade of urgencies followed by real – as well as petty – controversies, keep our minds distracted and our emotions churned up. We never get a period of quiet time to deeply focus on an issue or problem until we completely understand it.
A troubling example of incomplete understanding involves a firefighter who has complications from an on-the-job injury. The rehabilitation process drags on. Termination is proposed because a year has passed and the firefighter cannot pass the work performance test to return to the fire station.
As the brothers and sisters are publicizing a “Go Fund Me” account we learn that the firefighter has not used any of the processes to appeal the termination decision or petition for an alternative work assignment. “They” assumed that there were no options, having never read the jurisdiction and worker compensation fine print.
3 Fire Officer Activities as a Supervisor in the Show Business World
The fire officer needs to know, within an actionable level of detail, how to resolve work-related issues that impact subordinates. Go beyond telling the firefighter to “… call human resources” or “... call the shop steward.” Work with the subordinate and, if this is the first time you are dealing with this issue, walk through the process together. Encourage the subordinate to complete paperwork and meet deadlines.
Public safety often presents unique and complicated issues for human resource departments. If you become a consistent and informed advocate for members in your company, you will be considered a trusted asset to your human resource colleagues
The fire officer needs to be a critical thinker when it comes to “news.” The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) provides this infographic on how to spot fake news:
Regularly review the fire department regulations, procedures, and orders. Look at one regulation at every start-of-shift line-up. Consider having the crew respond to case studies where they have to research an administrative or “obscure” fire department issue to determine a solution.
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Neil Postman (1931–2003) was chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University and founder of its Media Ecology program. He wrote more than twenty books.
Postman, Neil (1985/2005) Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse In The Age of Show Business. 20th-anniversary edition. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Silvestre, Dan (2018 Sept 11) Lessons from Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Medium.com. Accessed August 3, 2019. https://medium.com/@dsilvestre/lessons-from-amusing-ourselves-to-death-by-neil-postman-962221ee622tk
Derakhshan, Hossein (2016 Nov 29) Social Media is Killing Discourse Because It’s Too Much Like TV: We need more text and fewer videos and memes in the age of Trump. MIT Technology Review.
Carr, Nicholas (2011) The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing to Our Brains. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
Featured Image: Warwick Fire Department Annual Fireman’s Carnival