Ray Bradbury's Crystal Ball

Some days, it seems we are living in another Dark Age, only we really don't see it. The news is full of dire things: colleges getting rid of the books in their libraries to cut costs, books and other learning materials being challenged and removed from schools at all levels, misinformation, deep fake videos, AI Chatbots creating "papers" filled with inaccuracies-- how will we move forward? How can we depend on anything, if it's all so impermanent or banned? 

In his 1951 classic novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury writes,

“If you don't want 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, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the 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.”

It seems to me that Bradbury knew what was coming. The novel is filled with "futuristic" things, like talking TV walls, small radios to be worn in the ears, and a soul-dead population that does not read because it makes them unhappy. I see this every single day, and it worries me. 

Bradbury says, 

“The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

We have to open our eyes. There are still a lot of us who are shouting into the dark, but it seems that there are too many forces who are working quite actively against humanity's better interests. Investigating the investigations and spinning wheels in the mud is just the outer trappings of a darker, more rot-filled world view. The obvious hate for thinking individuals is apparent; this dragging us into a swamp is intentional, evil, and is a far greater threat to all of us than nuclear weapons or another global pandemic. Those are merely the weapons being used by those who insist on cultural ignorance to glorify their own souls.

Go read a book-- I will.

C