Tag: Ray Bradbury

March 3, 2023 – Fahrenheit 451 Conclusions

March 3, 2023 /

To understand Fahrenheit 451 is to understand the backstory to how it was written. Of course, none of this is written in the book but it was part of mine as an appendix.  Fahrenheit 451 is an evolution and combination of several short stories and an ongoing effort to get published. Unlike Orwell, Bradbury was alive for many decades after it’s publishing and indeed had some words to say in confirmation of what I am about to write.

The inspiration for the story came from a book called “Darkness at Noon” by Arthur Koestler.  This is not a book that I have read or am familiar with, but the description seems worthy of going on the reading list especially if it inspired Bradbury. It is a story of persecution in a totalitarian regime.  It was at that time that Bradbury decided that science fiction was the genre of literature the permitted the most leeway for his beliefs and story. All that being said, I don’t think that this was a protest story as much as it was a warning.

Though not formally educated, you could probably say that Bradbury had a desire to write. One of the precursor stories to Fahrenheit 451 was a short story called “The Pedestrian”. Essentially, this was based on an encounter with police that Bradbury thought he was wrongfully accused. This interaction pissed him off enough to write a story about it.

Later, Bradbury developed another short story titled “The Fireman” as a science fiction magazine submission.  This was the true basis of Fahrenheit 451 with the portions of “The Pedestrian” weaved in.  That part of the story was Montag’s interaction with Clarisse whereas most of the rest of it was “The Fireman”.  This was all done in an attempt to make a book length story for publishing.

On an interesting note, as Bradbury’s work got critical acclaim it began to be read in schools in the 1960s. The publishers took it upon themselves to sanitize the book from the largest adult themes such as language unbeknownst to Bradbury.  It was some years before it was brought to his attention and Bradbury immediately demanded that be stopped, which they did.  I think that you can say that he walked the walk.

In the grand scheme of things, Bradbury was no slouch. He could read the tea leaves on the way things were going and the subject manner of banning books was no coincidence. With the age of new media coming, and I mean TV he could anticipate that books being passed over.  The reason the subject matter was banning books was because it was more palatable considering TV was quickly surpassing reading for entertainment.  It was also Bradbury’s belief (and mine) that there was more to lose banning them. You see, with books you have to think about what is being said and interpret what is happening.  Thinking is what makes them “dangerous”.

I realize that this has been a little different than some of my other wrap-ups because I have a lot of information on and from Bradbury himself. With that, I think I will leave the analysis there. This is a short book that can easily be read in a couple sessions. The story is easy to follow and I think that it is approachable science fiction. In today’s world, it doesn’t even seem too far out there. That was probably different when it was written in the 1950s.

You can probably tell from my complimentary tone that I hold a high opinion of the book. I think a lot of factors come together between the story, the length and the approachability to make that happen. If I had one criticism, I would say that the ending was a little unbelievable. I am not totally convinced that after multiple nuclear detonations that it would be possible to go back to the city. I imagine that the radiation and fallout would be off the charts.

But, in Bradbury’s defense the first nuclear bomb was tested in 1952 which was one year before the book was published. We know so much more about the effects of nuclear detonation now the at that time. Plus, we have the benefit of almost instantaneous and comprehensive information with the internet. I am sure his depiction of nuclear war was was colored by the perception what the public thought about war at the time with the information that was available.

End Your Programming Routine: The warning that I am referring to in the first paragraph is the warning about taking in your surroundings or some people use the phrase being in the moment, that is living.  With your earbuds in, driving around at 200mph to get home and watch TV people are losing touch with reality.  I feel like that is just as relevant today as it was in 1953. And maybe even a little more so as we approach that era of life in a four-screen environment.

February 24, 2024 – Fahrenheit 451, Chapter 3

February 24, 2023 /

This week, I am looking at the concepts of chapter 3, the last chapter in Fahrenheit 451. As the second time reading it, I can honestly say that I don’t remember a single thing about this book. I had a slight hope that maybe it would come back to me as I went along, but – nope. That is OK, because now I can come at it with a fresh and unbiased prospective.

If you read the book, then you know where the chapter starts. I’ll just say that there was a lot of burning of things. This translated into a failed manhunt and ending with nuclear war. And when once over, it was time to rebuild society. A little simplistic and abrupt if you ask me.

I have to be careful that I keep things in line as I write today. I am simultaneously thinking about this chapter and the overall wrap-up next week. While they are related, they are most definitely not the same. It has more to do with the origin story of the book rather than what is happening in this particular chapter.

Enough flowery non-sense and platitudes, let’s get into it. What I wanted to talk about today was a particular incident in the book. After Montag escaped from the scene of his troubles and his pursuers lost the trail something happened. What happened was that a fill-in for Montag was identified. The mechanical hound pursued, attacked and executed that person. All the while the event was filmed for TV and the action was conveniently abstract by camera angle, action and distance.

I definitely shouldn’t admit this but I will anyway. You see, I believe that people are stupid, until they are not. What I am saying is that people will believe almost anything reasonable until proven otherwise. Generally speaking this is related to issue that never effected me until they did and then they were real or wrong.

A political response to covid was believed and accepted by all sides because all sides were pretty much saying the same thing. Until your job was deemed ’essential’ or your job required a vaccine card or your dentist made you wear a mask in the lobby. It was then people said “wait a minute, this isn’t right. We are all in this together, or are we?”

You see, for propaganda to be effective, it has to be seen as accurate or true. When the mechanical hound killed the stand in for Montag, it was for show. It was to prove that a renegade’s actions has consequences and justice was served. As long as the greater population believed that there was no escape or no hope of resistance, there actually wasn’t.

An artificial society where friends and relatives are TV images, reality is built on whatever is seen. We all know that TV is staged and scripted. So the saying that perception is reality clearly germane to the topic. All my friends are on Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok. You catch what I am saying? I a saying that we are halfway there to living in an artificial society.

How many times have you heard about people that beat a disease are the ones that fight it at every turn? When my wife was going through cancer treatment, I read case studies provided for support members that spoke to the very situation. Of course, this is not everyone’s destiny but certainly when the stars align and the person has the right attitude, sometimes the seemingly impossible can happen.

End Your Programming Routine: I am certainly not advocating for doing something crazy or life threatening by fighting a tyrannical entity with deadly consequences. The definition of changing your programming is challenging the status quo. You must observe and question what you see versus what you know. A worthy fight is one that is worth the risks.

February 17, 2023 – Fahrenheit 451, Chapter 2

February 17, 2023 /

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.

February 10, 2023 – Fahrenheit 451, Chapter 1

February 10, 2023 /

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.