Amusing Ourselves to Death

Most of us in business do not wake up intending to ‘amuse ourselves to death.’ We wake up thinking about payroll, customers, margins, and the decisions waiting on our desks.

Yet an old book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, presses an uncomfortable question on Christian professionals: What if the very media environment in which we work is quietly training us to prefer diversion over depth, optics over truth, and performance over faithfulness?

In the modern West, we have drifted into Huxley’s world of pleasant distraction. In a culture shaped by television and now, by the endless scroll of social media, serious public discourse is recast as ‘shows,’ where the question is not ‘Is this true?’ but ‘Is this engaging?’

For those who lead that shift, it does not remain abstract; it shows up in how we read reports, how long we can sit with a hard problem, and how quickly we feel the itch to move on to something more stimulating.

The old culture rewarded people who could follow an argument, endure complexity, and hold ideas in tension. Instead, our image-driven culture rewards speed, reaction, and charisma. In a digital economy where our devices bring the “Now ... this” rhythm of the next new shiny thing, it is everywhere. One moment, we read about a war or a scandal; the next, we watch a clever or humorous clip, with no time to lament, repent, or thoughtfully respond to what we learned about the war. Without noticing, we become people who skim everything and absorb almost nothing.

Leadership in the way of Christ requires precisely the muscles that our media habits are weakening: the capacity to attend, to listen, to sit with reality long enough to discern truth about it. We can slip into managing perceptions rather than shepherding people, curating a brand rather than cultivating character.

We need to learn how the media works on us so that we can exercise some measure of autonomy instead of drifting along unconsciously. Scripture reminds us that the human heart is not a neutral processor of information; it is a worshiping engine. If “amusement” becomes our functional god—promising ease, constant stimulation, and freedom from boredom—it will shape what we count as success in business. We will be tempted to choose the strategy that feels exciting over the one that is quietly faithful, the decision that looks good in a quarterly report over the one that is good for our people over the years.

What might resistance look like in practice? It may look like structuring a leadership meeting so that a complex issue receives unhurried attention rather than being rushed through to fit a packed agenda. It may mean limiting the intrusion of devices into certain spaces, so that when we are with our teams, we are with them. It may mean building ample time into our weeks to think, to pray where appropriate, and to ask not only, “Will this work?” but “Is this faithful to Christ and good for the people entrusted to us?”