Reframing the Bizarre as Normal

Neil Postman made this astute comment forty years ago in his classic work, Amusing Ourselves to Death:

“There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us...seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture’s adjustment to the epistemology...is now complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane. And if some of our institutions seem not to fit the template of the times, why it is they, and not the template, that seem to us disordered and strange.”

We’re now experiencing this at an exponential level. The ones who ask questions are seen as bizarre while the ones who embrace the rise of the artificial are viewed as completely rational. Wisdom and discernment are in short supply at this moment. To raise this issue doesn’t make us the problem. The problem is already upon us.

Rejecting the endless progression of the artificial may seem antiquated in our high-tech world, but it actually offers a more authentic way to live.

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