Summary and Themes of Ch. 4

While reading Ch. 4, I made lists of the virtues and vices that each narrative highlights.  The “Spaceship Earth” myth promotes the ideas of interdependence, solidarity between nations and people, global cooperation (alt. global consciousness), and subsequently it combats racism, waste, and indifference.  The “Fallen Angel” myth asserts the precarious nature of human knowledge contra absolute certainty; this epistemic claim should lead to “perspective, balance, and humility in learning” wherein science is construed as a method for correcting our mistakes.  As such, the “Fallen Angel” myth discredits forms of hubris, pride, and dogmatism.  The “American Experiment” myth once again promotes the notions of inclusivity, participation, and continuous argumentation over and against any sense of finality: In short, Postman prefers the question mark to any other end punctuation.  “The Law of Diversity” strings together numerous adjectives and verbs. Diversity, understood in physical terms, spawns vitality, creativity, growth/expansion, strength, enrichment; it asks individuals to identify with larger circles of humanity and, hence, runs counter to sameness, fixedness and impermeability, “the decay of organization,” falsifications, divisiveness, isolation, parochialism, and hostility.  Lastly, the “Word Weavers/World Makers” myth is an interpretive commitment to the role of language.  Properly understood, language transforms the world and, therefore, has moral, social, political, and aesthetic dimensions.  If “believing is seeing” and beliefs are writ in human language, than language shapes our realities for better, for worse.

I think, between the first four myths, there is much continuity: inclusiveness vs. exclusiveness; open-mindedness vs. closed-mindedness; cooperation vs. indifference; cosmopolitanism vs. regionalism/provincialism; ongoing processes/continuousness vs. finality; humility vs. certainty/dogmatism.  (The way the last myth is written differs greatly from the preceding, but I think it ultimately serves the same democratic and cosmopolitan virtues.)  In Democracy and Education, Dewey claims that the aim of education is more education, i.e. the continuous growth of the individual through social intercourse/communication.  In genuine communications, there is a very real expansion of selfhood, an incorporation of the other.  Postman reminded me of Dewey’s thinking.

Interestingly, here is how much attention Postman gives each myth in Part 2 (in terms of total page numbers, from greatest to least): The Law of Diversity (29 pgs) [Zo’s least favorite], Word Weavers/World Makers (22 pgs) [Zo’s favorite], Spaceship Earth (21 pgs), Fallen Angel (15 pgs), and lastly the American Experiment (14 pgs).