The portion of the Postman passage I found most interesting was its reference to the Korzybski and his idea of humans being different from other organisms in our role as "time-binders" That humans have the capacity to transport their experience through time, amassing knowledge from the past to communicating such knowledge to the future, and that the principle means to accomplish this is by the use of symbols in language.
Though the extremities of this ideology might stretch rationality, it does make sense that the past knowledge amassed by our ancestors would define the parameters of our world perception. It would also be understandable to assume that since we can manipulate the physical world that past knowledge could also influence our shaping of the material world and the perceptual world. After all, the very languages we speak today are constructed from the languages long since dead and in some cases forgotten.
This idea that language is a way of time travel for the beliefs and basic understanding of the world, is further supported when looking at how religion can constitute the ideas created by whole nations. The United States being included. In this case the knowledge is what should constitute the moral obligations of a society. So it is easy to see how this idea might have some truth when you consider that without language we could not create such a developed world by expanding on the applications of past beliefs.
This expansion not only involves morals but also the material functions of our world. For instance when the Wright Brothers began to experiment with flight, they could derive inspiration from the past documents of such minds as Leonardo De Vince. The very architectures that we find to be the most reflective of grace and elegance today were created with much more grandeur in both ancient Greece and Rome. Granted that the study of the still existent architecture has been useful, but the degradation of these wonders make the ancient blueprints and documents that were created by the original engineers to be pivotal in understanding the intended magnificence.
There is only one part of Korzybski's theory that I disagree with, however. Korzybski claims the man kind is the only organism capable of this "time-bending". Now I grant the use of language sophisticates our ability to "time-bend" with much more complexity and efficiency, but it has been known that animals have been able to know the locations of mating, birthing, and resource locations from out of the womb or egg. So to say that man is the only one capable of this extraordinary ability might be just the ugly rearing of an inferiority complex from the dear old Count.
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I think you've found a good hole in Korzybski's argument: yes, other creatures do have the sort of timeless memory that Postman, at least, wants to attribute to language. And communicate as they might, no animal other than humans have language.
Since you mention religion in relation to this topic, I thought of something I'd just read last week for one of my graduate classes in religious rhetoric: Pope Benedict's most recent encyclical, Spe Salvi. He writes in one part about how philosophers have understood progress:
"For Bacon, it is clear that the recent spate of discoveries and inventions is just the beginning; through the interplay of science and praxis, totally new discoveries will follow, a totally new world will emerge, the kingdom of man[16]. He even put forward a vision of foreseeable inventions—including the aeroplane and the submarine. As the ideology of progress developed further, joy at visible advances in human potential remained a continuing confirmation of faith in progress as such."--Spe Salvi, paragraph 17)
It seems that this idea of language as time travel does not move backwards only. Perhaps it allows us to conceive of the future as well.
As you say, though, it's easy to push this idea beyond its rational limits.
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