Building a Bridge to the 18th Century

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Back for the Future

Neil Postman calls himself an "enemy" of the 20th century. He has never been a fan of television or video games, as he reveals in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Though he does not perceive himself as a neo-Luddite, he is apprehensive about the direction in which technology is leading us, as he explains in Technopoly. And he is aghast at the present state of our educational system and the dissipation of "childhood," as he relates in The End of Education and The Disappearance of Childhood.

But Postman is far from a curmudgeon without a cause, or a solution. In his most controversial book to date, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future, Postman revisits the subjects of his earlier works to suggest ways to ensure a better pathway over the bridge to the 21st century for those who "are still searching for a way to confront the future, a way that faces reality as it is, that is connected to a humane tradition, that provides sane authority and meaningful purpose."

Postman finds useful instruction in the Age of Enlightenment, a period that he defines as beginning in the middle of the 17th century, with John Locke and Isaac Newton, and extending to the 19th century, with John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the romantic poets. It was the age that saw the invention of the idea of progress and our modern conception of happiness. Reason was beginning to triumph over superstition, and both the philosophers and philosophes (those interested "in practical, concrete matters as scientists, educators, humanitarians, and reformers") developed the ways we think about inductive science, religious and political freedom, popular education, rational commerce, and the nation-state. It was the age of Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Kant, Hume, Pestalozzi, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin -- some of the greatest minds of the last 300 years.

While it has been argued that the 20th century gave us the rejection of racial and gender hierarchies, as well as a time of increased access to higher education, Postman explains that these were born out of the Age of Enlightenment. He does not deny that witches were burned at the stake as late as 1793 (in Poland), slavery was still in existence, and the Inquisition continued until the end of the 18th century. He instead draws our attention to the fact that Jefferson (a slave owner) denounced the African slave trade in the Declaration of Independence, and Frederick the Great employed the anti-despot Voltaire as his court philosopher. "You can take any century you please and make a list of its inhumanities. The eighteenth is no exception. But it is there, and in no other, that we have the beginnings of much that is worthwhile about the modern world."

There are three "transcendent narratives" of this century, according to the author: fascism, Nazism, and communism, and they gave way to more destruction than human history has ever witnessed. Postman naturally prefers the narrative of the Enlightenment; it is one of skepticism, a virtue in Postman's eyes, and our century surely could use that mode of critical thinking. Postman faults our current age (as yet unnamed) for our inability to ask the crucial questions we need to understand how to move forward. We don't ask of technology, for example, "What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?", "Whose problem is it?", and "Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?" Postman's solution for our future is to uphold the Enlightenment's legacy of skepticism, beginning with rethinking the ways we educate our children. He suggests that children be taught the art and science of asking questions, the concepts of semantics and scientific thinking, the history and principles of technological change, and comparative religion.

While the "twenty-first century" is "only a name," Postman concedes that "it is a name we use to foster hope, to inspire renewal, to get another chance to do it right...if we try to remember how others before us tried to get it right, our own chances are improved."

—Kera Bolonik

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"I am not suggesting that we become the eighteenth century, only that we use it for what it is worth and for all it is worth," Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death; Technopoly) argues in this penetrating, extended essay. Though other periods are rich with learning and wisdom, Postman believes the 18th-century Enlightenment is uniquely valuable and relevant to today's world. It gave us the rationalist notion of human progress--expressed and supported by science and technology--and the romantic critique, with its idea of inward progress and its suspicion of the machine. It gave us discursive narrative prose as the prototypical model of thought, along with more subtle, less hysterical critiques of language than postmodernists offer today. It gave us floods of new information, yet ridiculed information as an end in itself, urging a healthy respect for context and purpose. It gave us the idea of childhood as a distinct life stage linked to education and nurturance, illuminated by two contrasting visions--Locke's blank slate to be written on and Rousseau's plant to be cultivated. And it gave us representative democracy. All these were expressions of a world in which the dominant media, unlike today, was the printed word. As that environment fades, the complex tensions Postman illuminates are replaced by shallow sloganeering by those who present themselves as the embodiment of novelty and daring. Postman forcefully argues that we can use the complex legacy of the past to resist being swept into a shiny, simpleminded new dark age. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In this wide-ranging call to action, Postman, author of such impassioned books as The Disappearance of Childhood and Amusing Ourselves to Death, offers us the chance to ground our discussions of the 21st century in the historical and philosophical bedrock of the 18th. Postman is certainly no victim of technolust--he has no e-mail, no PC, and writes his manuscripts in longhand. Those Luddite tendencies notwithstanding, Postman says he is not against technology but wants it viewed as merely a tool. He cautions that, in the words of Thoreau, "our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.'" The philosophers and scientists whose works and thoughts he invokes include Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Smith, Paine, Franklin, and Jefferson. These worthies focused much attention on the technological developments of their times and all the resulting philosophical, social, political, and spiritual ripples. None of these thinkers "could possibly have embraced... the idea that technological innovation is synonymous with moral social and psychic progress." Yet today, too many e-mail postings and boardroom discussions--corporate, school, and library alike--begin with that certainty. Postman asks and tries to answer the core questions: "What is progress? How does it happen? How is it corrupted? What is the relationship between technological and moral progress?" And at center: "What is the problem to which technology is the solution?" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Putting a twist on a recent presidential campaign slogan, Postman (culture and communications, New York U.) offers the Enlightenment as a model for creating a humane future. Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, Thomas Paine, Jefferson, and Franklin are some of the luminaries he recommends for ideas on inductive science, religious and political freedom, popular education, rational commerce, the nation state, progress, and happiness. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

David Shi

Postman's brisk critique of contemporary trends and his urgent appeal for a common-sense skepticism make for compelling reading. His prose is witty and combative, lucid and self-revealing.
—The Christian Science Monitor

Kirkus Reviews

An intriguing cross-century dialogue. Neo-Luddite Postman (The End of Education, 1995, etc.) looks to the Age of Reason for an antidote to the hazy values of postmodernism. At the core of this intellectual journey is the concept of progress. While not quite an invention of the Enlightenment, the belief in progress as desirable and inevitable took root in the embrace of human rationality that fueled the scientific (in the broadest sense) progress of the 18th century. At the same time a powerful Romantic critique emerged, providing Postman a complex conception of progress to wield against a wide array of 20th-century adversaries. Against Derrida's deconstruction of meaning, there is the razor-sharp logic and utter common sense of Hume; against the worship of technology as the source of all good, there is Rousseau. This is a rather diverse (to put it kindly) position to uphold, but in fact Postman is arguing more for a cultural mindset than a specific philosophy: The problem with the 20th century is that it is the 18th century run amok; the combination of confidence and skepticism once associated with progress has been replaced by idolatry and nihilism. Postman seeks to bring us back to the moderate use of reason tempered by adherence to sensible cultural norms by contrasting contemporary and historical perspectives on technology, language, information, social narratives, children, democracy, and education. He shifts precariously back and forth between positive social commentator and borderline reactionary, but on the whole this is an erudite, thoughtful contribution to public discourse. While political theorists will be appalled by Postman's assertion that the meaning of the word"democracy" is "more or less settled" in this century and his simplistic political analysis, his examination of language and information is original and sophisticated, his essay on children thought-provoking. This book offers contemporary society a grounding in the past that is more than just intellectual nostalgia.