If you look at all the lists of books like or books related to or if you liked insert 1984/A Brave New World/Atlas Shrugged, Fahrenheit 451 is on the list. You knew it didn’t you? The fact is, I have been watching the library since I finished 1984 (which was 2021 now) and it just hasn’t been available. Since Covid, the library automatically renews books that have exceeded the due date. I suspect that Fahrenheit 451 is lost.

This is a book that I read as a 16 year old. I remember checking it out from my high school library. It is like reading it all over again because I don’t remember a thing except what the cover looked like and that it was a paperback. While I have technically read it, you can safely assume that I won’t have preconceived notions at this point.

Some of these books, I don’t know if it makes sense to do a chapter by chapter review. Although, it is difficult to determine if you haven’t read or don’t remember the book how to actually approach it. At least this time, it will be what it will be. I am going to examine the concepts of Chapter one.

Let’s first introduce the main character, Guy Montag. Guy is a what is called a fireman. In this day and age, a fireman is someone who burns books. With it is also the house, it’s possessions and sometimes the occupants are burned. What is supposed to happen is that the building is fire resistant and the occupants are arrested which means only the books and flammable possessions are burned.

Guy is married to Mildred. She has clearly drank too much of the Kool-aid. Our first introduction to her is in an overdosed state, zoned out on life by pills and reality with earbuds in. She is the manifestation of the society: programmed by TV and propaganda and depressed as a result.

Guy has a short. platonic relationship with a 17 girl named Clarisse. She seems to be a wild-child in that she no longer attends school and acts as she pleases. While she seems ignorant of the political environment and social norms, it is that same characteristic the leads her to draw her own conclusions in life without the influence of propaganda.

Between Guy’s career, his wife’s mental state and Clarisse’s intuition, is the concept of the chapter. Idle time leads to reading, communicating and thinking, Those activities lead to questioning the status quo. As a result, reading is banned, communicating is limited and thinking is diminished. Those activities have been replaced by the TV. Boy isn’t that the truth.

My kids are in high school. Since I live on Main street and that is also the same street as the high school, I often see a lot of kids walking to and from school either passing by my house or me travelling back and forth to school. The number of kids that I see walking and staring at their phones is incredible. My kids do it too.

Electronics have been around a long time, ninety years since radio was a mainstay in the home. Never has such a device created zombies but before cell phones. The minute that they leave the school, they have to see what they missed on the phone. That takes priority over the environmental factors such as the weather, traffic and life all around them.

Ironically, we live in a time where it is easier than it has ever been to be both informed and to research information. Yet society is becoming dumber and more ignorant than it has ever been. You would likely say that the newspaper is irrelevant. That being said we have less outlets producing journalistic level news stories. In theory, that is non-biased, properly sourced articles written to inform the reader.

That has been replaced by twitter polls, Facebook rumors and TikTok dances. Nextdoor is a pile of garbage that is more concerned with proper parking and home owners association rules than meaningful neighbor interactions. My point with any of this is that we have replaced curated information produced with ethical standards to a free form of mind control. And with that, people are driven into ideological camps never to return, along with their degree of logic, rhetoric and grammar.

We no longer have to worry about idle time. People are blue pilled in the Matrix and they do it to themselves. As soon as they get a chance, they plug themselves back in to the programming. Even to the point that they can’t even walk home without staring at the screen.

End Your Programming Routine: It seems obvious that to end your programming you have stopped doing it to yourself. I think that it is important to realize what is going on around you so that you know you are being programmed. Only then can you make the decision to stop self-inflicted problems. I hope people are not so apathetic as to not care, but I am very suspicious. As with all problems, start with your circle of control, yourself.