The Great Books reading group with Laurie Johnson will be starting a new book in September, Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, this time co-led with patron David Ruiz! This group meets the first Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. Now is a good time to join for as little as $1 per month in support!
Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death is a sharp warning about the way entertainment has reshaped public life. He argues that television—and by extension today’s media culture—has turned serious discourse into spectacle. News, politics, religion, and education are packaged as entertainment, leaving us less capable of engaging with complex ideas or making thoughtful decisions. Instead of confronting problems with depth and seriousness, Postman argues that we confuse image and amusement with substance.
This book feels more urgent than ever in the age of social media and streaming platforms. Postman challenges us to ask whether our culture is defined more by Aldous Huxley’s vision of people distracted into passivity than by George Orwell’s vision of oppression. Our group will meet once a month for at least four sessions to dig into this timely critique—exploring how Postman’s insights help us understand the world we live in and what it means for the future of democracy, education, and our own lives. Join us to wrestle with these questions together!
On the Maurin Academy’s Patreon site, your $1 per month of support gets you into this group and Jakob Hanschu’s reading group when it resumes, as well as a single stream for all our public content. There are also $5 and $10 per month tiers that get you into everything we do either recorded or live.