We are off to the races. It feels strange to say that with this chapter, we are over half way through the book. After months and months with Atlas Shrugged, we are going to finish this whole endeavor in one month. And that includes a summary of the entire book as well.
There is a lot going on in this chapter. It has to be the case because there is less than sixty pages remaining. So, the action has to go pretty quickly. I guess that this is the transition chapter or the beginning of the awakening within Montag.
The chapter began with Montag questioning his happiness. Using natural reckoning, he surmised that if he was unhappy in his position, then maybe doing the opposite would be the solution. The opposite would be instead of living in an artificial fantasyland like wall to wall TVs stroking your ego all day long, read, think and discuss with others to come to a higher understanding. This of course was highly illegal.
Along the progression of the story, Montag seeks self validation, a mentor and then finally proselytizing. I wouldn’t expect anything but trouble from this, but I won’t spoil the story completely. Instead, let’s turn focus on the concepts of the chapter. There are a lot of things I could say about different themes going on but, I think all roads lead to this quote from the character Faber.
“Number one, as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.” Depending on what side of the fence that you are on, this is Bradbury’s definition of the value of books (or the danger thereof).
I take it a step further for not just books but media content in general. I suppose at Bradbury’s time, the choices were quite a bit more limited and even dare I say definable. If Fahrenheit 451 were written today, it would have to include podcast, video streaming and movies and TV, etc. I am starting to develop some ideas of my own in my journey with philosophy. But, this is a topic for another day. Right now, I am focused with Bradbury on his stance that the ability to read/watch/listen to what you want is an important tenant of freedom. Since we are discussing Bradbury, I will use the word read to mean any form of media consumption for leisure in this post.
Media can be propaganda and propaganda can be media. So, while I am all for the freedom of choice to consume whatever materials people find interesting and satisfying. we have to be guarded that our choices aren’t ‘shining our own shackles’ if you will. The counter point to this is what people often label as ‘mental masturbation’. I will elaborate more on these two below.
As a recent phenomenon, some people binge watch a show like ‘The Bachelor’. This is an example of what I am referring to as ‘shining your shackles’. I say this because I have never found anything redeeming about the series and I question even the entertainment value of the concept. It remains extremely popular because of lack of depth and even re-enforces a fairy tale delusion. People watching it are proud that they have seen every episode and even pick sides like at WWE style event, meaning it has a scripted outcome and artificial action. There are even oddsmakers in Las Vegas on the whole process.
Like a three ring circus, keeping people dim and entertained is a strategy for manipulation working in concert with advancing more sinister ideals. Sure, the media companies goal is to make money. All the while, attention to any sort of controversial or important subjects are out in the background. People in this circle tend to base decisions on how they feel about something rather than the facts of the situation.
Contrast this to the opposite side, maybe someone more like myself. I am reading all these books like 1984 and Atlas Shrugged for fun. I do end up trying to advance what I see are the values of the books by writing but there is a cliff there. What I am saying is that too much of this self-validation becomes mental masturbation. If all I ever do is read and write on all of the points that I already believe then I am just as guilty of being in la-la land as ‘The Bachelor’ crowd.
I of course believe that reading what you want is important. The zen master is able navigate both sides of the spectrum and really get to meaningful purpose. Some degree of absolute entertainment is fine. Some degree of value based entertainment is fine. Really to make it work effectively, those two groups and concepts have to meet in the middle.
I will go back to the structure of the quote now. For the most part, the leisure portion of the equation is not a question in the United States and in the book. As such, I will ignore that one. Quality information is hit and miss. This is what I was getting to with the propaganda sentence that started this post out. I do think that this is worthy of its own discussion. Suffice to say, we have both quality and non-quality work prevalent in society. And in theory, we have the right to discuss.
Now I know that this is going long but it is worth staying here for a bit. Let us assume that we had quality information about a vaccine discussion. Technically, we have the legal right to discuss pros and cons of such. However, the places of such debate were labelled as ‘Dangerous misinformation’ on social media. I ask you, what is more dangerous having the debate or silencing one side?
I will leave with this, 1938 Germany. Official government policy was to promote and cultivate a master race, read not-Jews, not-central Europeans, you know the list. Dangerous misinformation was to stand otherwise to that policy even though plenty of people secretly didn’t believe it. They had no real safe way to fight back except in the underground at the risk of death.
My grandparents were alive (and adults) at such time. My father was born the year after the war ended. We think that we are so far removed and much more sophisticated to ever go back to such a horrible place. It’s not that society has changed, the level and mechanisms of propaganda has changed. Even our recent ancestors had a better sense of values that we do now. As such, they didn’t tolerate a man calling himself a woman to win every swimming event. That’s OK, there is a new season of ‘The Bachelor’ out. We can deal with this problem another day.
End Your Programming Routine: How do we end our programming when we are strung out on anti-depression pills and zombies in front of the TV? My belief is that we have to do what matters. What that actually looks like and how it is done I suppose is the real solution. I try to bring a mixture of problems like these types of books and then solution like building or fixing or making something. I am not ignoring the problem it is just like the scale is so massive that I can’t do it alone. So I do what I can.
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