Post 41

Okay, so I'm reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury again. I think I was in high school the last time I read it. Which means some 10 -12 years have passed. So anyway, I'm reading the book, and it's moving along as I remember it. But then I come to the passage of Captain Beatty explaining to Montag how their book-burning world came to be. I'm floored by how close it seems to the world around me. I'll come back to that in a moment. Anyway, again I'm reading along, and I come to the passage where Professor Faber is explaining three things that are missing from their dystopic world. Near the end of the passage Faber says, "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.” Oh man.

So what the heck does "quality of information" mean? Well, since I'm already going to risk quoting more of the book later, I'll try to explain this in my own words. The term "quality of information" is not just accurate news reporting or scientific details. Remember, we're talking about a term from Fahrenheit 451, where it's not reading that has been banned, but books. All books, fiction, nonfiction, opinion, philosophy, satire, poetry. So "information" here does not mean simply facts or data. The term "quality of information" means depth, substance, potency. Gulliver's Travels, A Brief History of Time, Sonnets from the Portuguese, The Art of War, To Kill a Mockingbird, these are works that have "quality of information." (I am struggling over how to explain this.) They make us think and feel and question. They have detail, life, dimension, illumination, magic. They communicate through depth of description, through accuracy of character development, through potency of wisdom, through sharpness of wit, through substance of content. This is quality of information.

Which brings us to number two, leisure. To be sure, this does not mean simply time away from work, time spent watching television, or vacations. In this instance leisure means the time to consider, ponder and mull over the quality of information in the books. This part is a little easier for me to explain than the first one, because I know exactly to what I want to compare this part. And that is eating good food and drinking a quality wine. When one puts a savory morsel of food into his mouth with the intention of enjoying the flavor, does one swallow immediately or allow the food to linger on his tongue? Unless he is a nutcase, he allows the food to linger on his tongue and let the full flavor of the morsel sink into his taste buds. In case the reader has not experienced a quality wine (and no, the $10 or less bottle you get at the grocery store does not qualify), to get the full enjoyment of the flavor of the wine, one needs to sip slowly and even inhale through the mouth slightly while allowing the wine to flow over the entire surface of the tongue. The reader may be asking, how does this apply to reading a book? Just reading is not enough. Quality of information is meaningless unless one also takes the time to savor the quality. (This is why I never liked the concept of speed reading.) Instead of rushing through The Maltese Falcon, Catcher in the Rye, or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, for example, because one wants to get to the next plot point, or because it is a school assignment or just to say one has read it, r-e-a-d - s-l-o-w-l-y and consider what the author has written. Books are not movies or television shows. One can take as long as one cares to read a book or a scene or a paragraph or a sentence or a phrase. One can allow the style or the action or the image to linger and flow through the mind and the imagination as long as he so desires. But let us take this a step further. Sometimes what one should do is to put the book down, sit or lie still, and think. Just think about the book or the words or the meaning or the quality.

Too often these days, and this is easy to do, we fill up our days with tasks and activities. There are even experts now who can give various reasons, like personal fulfillment or building memories or better sleep, why we should fill our days with work and pack our vacations with as much activity as possible. I disagree. We all need time to simply think, to digest our experiences. That requires quiet time without rushing to and fro, without working hard, without watching television, without tinkering at a hobby, without trying to fill the time with some activity. I don't mean hours of quiet time every day. Sometimes just a few minutes. Sometimes longer. Maybe sometimes it would be an hour or more. Regardless, we should take the time to ruminate ideas in found in our reading and our experiences.

ru·mi·nate
v. ru·mi·nat·ed, ru·mi·nat·ing, ru·mi·nates
v. intr.

To turn a matter over and over in the mind.
To chew cud.

v. tr.

To reflect on over and over again.

All that quality of information and leisure to digest is valueless, however, without number three of Professor Faber's list: "the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two." And so we come to what is arguably the most important part. Obviously, I could go off on a long stultiloquy about the Constitution and free speech and all that. But I am not going to do that. Instead I want to go back to Captain Beatty's explanation for how the culture of the world of Fahrenheit 451 came to be. I am not going to quote the whole passage, but I am going to quote a lot and hope the copywrite laws don't bite me in the end.

“Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there,
everywhere. They could afford to be different. The
world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes
and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple
population. Films and radios, magazines, books,
leveled down to a sort of paste-pudding norm...

Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then
cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up
at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.
... Out of the nursery into the college and back into
the nursery...

More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you
don't have to think, eh? Organize and organize and
superorganize super-super sports. More cartoons in
books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less.
Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere,
somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. ...

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization,
shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities.
Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat
lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons,
Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese,
Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites,
Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in
this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant
represent any actual painters, cartographers,
mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag,
the less you handle controversy, remember that! All
the minor minor minorities with their navels to be
kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up
your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a
nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned
snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No
wonder books stopped selling, the critics said.
But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning
happily, let the comic books survive. And the
three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you
have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government
down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no
censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass
exploitation, and minority pressure carried the
trick...”

I want to interrupt the quote here. Notice what Captain Beatty is saying. No government, no Fascist or Communist or Capitalist or religious leader forced these changes down anyone's throat or even deceived people into accepting them. The populace, the masses, the people did it to themselves. They chose it. They pursued it. And all in the name of the "common good", "the well-being of others", "Humanity".

So upon what does the right to carry out actions based on quality of information and the leisure to digest it lay? The government? The Constitution? Humanity? No, no, and no. The right does not rest on a 'what'. It rests on a 'who'. You. You have the ability to hold on to it or to give it away. Does it rest on one's neighbors too? Yes. Should one depend on one's neighbors to keep it for him? No. This right, like all rights worth having, belongs to you. It belongs to you as much as anything else you own, your computer, your chair, your hand. And you should work just as hard to keep it as you would anything else if not more so. Without the right to act upon them, the conclusions one makes based on one's ruminations are pointless. And so that pondering will become worthless. As that thinking fades, so then will the quality of information wither. Then the worst parts of Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World will come to pass. And the worst part of all would be that we will have brought it upon ourselves.

Looking for Fascists and Communists and government conspiracies is easy. Seeing how 'they' affect culture and us is easy. Noticing what we may be doing to ourselves is not so easy. Which takes us back to Captain Beatty.

‘...Surely you remember the boy in your own school
class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the
reciting and answering while the others sat like so
many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this
bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures
after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike.
Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution
says, but everyone made equal. Each man the
image of every other; then all are happy, for there
are no mountains to make them cower, to judge
themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the
house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the
weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the
target of the well-read man?...

You must understand that our civilization is so vast
that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred.
Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above
all? People want to be happy, isn't that right?
Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be
happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep
them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we
live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation?...

Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo.
Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle
Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on
tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people
are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace,
Montag....

...We know how nip most of them in the bud, early. You
can't build a house without nails and wood. If you
don't want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If
you don't a man unhappy politically, don't give him
two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.
Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is
such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient,
topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than
that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give people
contests they win by remembering the words to more
popular songs or the names of state capitals or how
much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of
noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of
'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant'
with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking,
they'll get a sense of motion without moving.
And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't
change. Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy
or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies
melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and
put it back together again, and most men can,
nowadays, is happier than any man who tried to
slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which
just won't be measured or equated without making man
feel bestial and lonely. I know, I've tried it; to
hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your
acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet-cars,
motorcycle-helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of
everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama
is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is
hollow, sting me with theremin, loudly. I'll think I'm
responding to the play, when it's only a tactile
reaction to vibration. But I don't care. I just like
solid entertainment.

And just to drive home the point, I want to also quote from Ray Bradbury's afterword for Fahrenheit 451.

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to
burn a book. And the world is full of people running
about with lit matches. Every minority, be it
Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen
Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's
Lib/Republican/Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it
has the will, the right, the duty to douse the
kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees
himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain
porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine
and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak
above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit
451, described how the books were burned first by
minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph this
book then that, until the day came when the books were
empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed
forever.

Now my point is not that we must be wary of political correctness though I could easily make that point. My point is that freedom is up to you. After the September 11, 2001, attack there was a lot of talk about being more aware of what goes on around us. Indeed, we should be. We should also be aware of what we are doing. Watching 'them' is not enough. We must also watch ourselves. I am not advocating paranoia, but self-awareness. Because even if the government or special interest groups or whoever tried to steal freedoms away from us or to manipulate us into giving them away, once the freedoms are gone, we would have no one to

blame but ourselves.

So when you hear or read about legislation that is supposed to make you more safe, or someone starts talking about the "common good", or someone explains that something is for your own good, question them and yourself. No matter how good their words sound, is it really something that you want in the long run, that you believe will be truly good for you? Remember the old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Remind yourself from time to time that people, men and women, sacrificed their lives and potential so that you could have freedom. Do you want people to have to die again to restore what you allowed others to take away? And above all, never believe that your opinion does not matter. Never believe that your efforts, your vote, your expression would never make a difference. It does. When we all firmly believe that, no one will be able to take our rights away.

And that is my opinion.

Saturday, April 20, 2002