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Designed for Connectedness
sharePublished 5/6/2024
I recently came across the following in a regular email I receive called English Teacher Weekly:
“The Medium is the Message”
This recent post from Brett and Kate McKay at The Art of Manliness is one of the most succinct summaries of Neil Postman’s important 1982 book Amusing Ourselves To Death that I’ve come across. Postman’s book applies Marshal McLuhan’s idea, “the medium is the message,” to the television age. I read it about 15 years ago, and let’s just say I haven’t been the same since.
One of Postman’s concerns in the ‘80s was the pace and decontextualization of television news, the way it flattens and trivializes its subject matter.
But arguably the most significance-draining aspect of the medium of modern media is the way that each piece of context-less content is sandwiched between other context-less and entirely unconnected pieces of content.
Postman said the phrase “now … this” was one of the scariest phrases in our language. He was again referring to news programs and the way the phrase allows newscasters to abruptly segue between two completely unrelated stories, as in “The missile strike killed over 100 civilians. Now … this. A koala bear was born at the zoo!”
Postman noted: “The phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order or meaning and is not to be taken seriously.”
God created connectedness. His design is for us to be connected to Him, to each other, to creation, and to His Word.
Apart from God, everything is disconnected. We fail to realize how now is affected by what was and how it will influence what comes next. Instead of learning from the past, we sacrifice the present for the future and the future for the present.
In education, abandoning cursive (connecting letters), inductive phonics (learning the parts first and then building words as opposed to deconstructing whole words and guessing at the parts), and the introduction of higher-level learning before the basics are mastered has reduced the effectiveness of our education system.
We fail to make meaning and value in the present. We find ourselves instead so focused on anticipation of what we hope will come next that what is now loses its value.
Teachers and students – especially seniors – are feeling the draw of summer and graduation right now. So focused on their anticipation of next, they often sacrifice the precious moments that God has given now. Failing to redeem the time.
This commercially driven society keeps us focused on the next, the new, and the different. God wants us to be present with him. Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”