Degree of slavery: how we were taught to think

Exactly seventy years ago the world saw a book that it immediately wanted, but did not have time to burn. Yes, we are talking about Ray Bradbury’s great dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451. As we remember, and we remember, 451 degrees is the temperature at which paper, and therefore books, burn. Bradbury, who lived to be 91 years old and worked all his life, even after a stroke, created not only an excellent text, but also an accurate picture of the future, which has already arrived for us. Fahrenheit 451 is surprisingly good at its prophetic revelations.

Ray Bradbury was one of those people about whom Hollywood loves to make motivational films – all these stories about self-made men who believed in themselves and went towards a dream, towards a goal despite obstacles. The fate of the author of “The Martian Chronicles” and “Dandelion Wine” is truly motivating, and he himself evokes enormous respect. Ray was born into the family of an English settler and a Swedish mother, believed that his great-grandmother was burned as a witch during the Salem Trials, and always read a lot, a lot. Since childhood, he wanted to become a writer – and wrote his first story at the age of 12. At first, Bradbury created fantastic texts for cheap magazines, they paid little or no money, and in order to feed himself, the author had to sell newspapers on the streets. Later, in a bookstore in sunny Los Angeles, he met Margaret McClure – and she supported him for some time. He repaid her, as they say, a hundredfold. Ray lived with Margaret all his life. Happily ever after. Well, or, as they said in one movie, almost happily.

Another important, characteristic detail. Bradbury did not attend university. And he did it deliberately. Ray was educated in the library, believing that everything he needed was there, and was a real fan of books. So the novel “Fahrenheit 451,” published in Playboy magazine and which brought fame and money to the author, became not only a protest against a totalitarian future, but also a reverent declaration of love for books.

The work was filmed twice. The second time, in 2018, was rather mediocre, but the first film adaptation – 13 years after the publication of the book, in 1966 – was made by one of my favorite directors, Francois Truffaut. And Bradbury himself, this also needs to be said, wrote many scripts for films. Now Truffaut’s film looks quite old-fashioned – and this, in principle, is a property of science fiction, which becomes outdated quite quickly. Perhaps there is not a single science fiction film that would always be visually relevant. Another proof that cinema, unlike literature, is limited by time and space.

But meanings cannot become obsolete. On the contrary, over time, embodied in reality, they only gain power. This is, in fact, why we love cult dystopias – not for the descriptions of starships, but for the psychological aspects, for the types and morals predicted by the author. And in this regard, the novel “Fahrenheit 451” is an exemplary work, undoubtedly one of the best in its genre. Bradbury not only guessed the signs of the future, but also showed the vector of development of humanity as a whole. The catastrophe was born out of war – and ended with war. Bradbury understood: the main thing that defines a person is culture. It works for both the short and long term, and the real tragedy comes when culture is replaced by a simulacrum, or mass culture.

According to the plot of the novel, humanity, having achieved technological progress, lives in a safe world where there are no fires and there cannot be any. Nevertheless, there are fire brigades here, but they are needed to burn books. The novel begins with the striking phrase: “It was a pleasure to burn.” Books here are in many ways just an image. They are bearers of knowledge, culture, civilization. By destroying books, firefighters destroy human history, reset culture, and disrupt the coordinate system. Instead of books, people start watching TV, whose screens take up an entire wall. They do not hear each other, just as his wife Mildred does not hear the main character Guy. Over time, this portal to fooling will expand – it will be enough to take a gadget. As David Lynch showed in the third season of Twin Peaks, the Internet has brought access to the Black Lodge into every home. Readers of books, according to Bradbury, turned into outcasts, into enemies of the state, reminiscent of early Christians who gathered for prayer in secret and thus risked their lives. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, if firefighters find a book, they burn not only it, but the reader’s entire house, and he himself is thrown into prison.

In the middle of the last century, when humanity experienced another war, even more terrible and large-scale than the first, when philosophers asked the question “is poetry possible after Auschwitz?”, Bradbury’s rhetoric sounded super convincing. And his novel could be called a great warning – but look around: did anyone heed the words of the writer? The answer, unfortunately, is obvious. Humanity has turned into exactly what Bradbury, Huxley, Orwell, Chapek, Zamyatin described. It gave itself up to slavery with such pleasure, happy and sick from the possibility of endless consumption, that it completely lost sight of the stop valve. And bombs are dropped on hospitals, killing thousands of women, old people and children.

Just look around. Can your children hear you? Or do they have an earphone stuck in their ear? Can husbands and wives hear you? Or are they buried in the screen, fenced off from each other by media reality? Is this the life we ​​wanted to get, where man to man is not even a wolf, but a polyp, a mollusk, a hydra, existing autonomously, consuming greedily and immediately throwing out the products of consumption? Who is a person in this world of post-truth, where link leads to link – and so on ad infinitum? And instead of real people, there are images from social networks. And what has the vaunted tolerance become? There are more and more minorities – and they demand more and more freedoms and privileges. But this did not lead to equality and brotherhood – no, it led to the dictatorship of minorities, which first destroyed culture, and then normal life in principle.

All this was predicted and described by Ray Bradbury. He could have been mistaken in details and forms, but he clearly grasped the main thing: the crisis of civilization will be generated primarily by two factors. Firstly, the technical process greatly outstrips the moral development of society – Tarkovsky also spoke about this in Solaris. Secondly, humanity is moving not towards development, blossoming complexity, but, on the contrary, towards simplification. From books to films, from films to TV series, from TV series to clips and commercials, from commercials to reels and shorts. All human thought, accumulated over the years, will fit into a minute-long video shot by yet another influencer who does not distinguish Iraq from Iran. In such a world, books are not only unnecessary, they are even harmful.

In the novel Fahrenheit 451, the author made only one mistake: he thought that books would be burned. However, the reality turned out to be worse – however, Bradbury later described it himself: “The only crime worse than burning books is not reading them.” Humanity really voluntarily abandoned books, surrendering to the slavery of stupidity and primitiveness. You can, of course, continue to believe that we are all progressive, smart and individual, but then tell me why what is happening is happening? And now I’m talking not only about wars, but about widespread disintegration: when families are destroyed, parents do not understand their children, education has turned into an atavism, and culture has turned into a brothel and tavern. Therefore, selection works in reverse: it is not the best who get to the top, but the worst or, more often, the average, ironed with stupidity and servility, incapable of thinking, but capable of groveling.

All this is a consequence of a confused coordinate system and the lack of holistic thinking – what reading gave. Without it, the world falls apart into pieces that are incompatible with each other. And it is no coincidence that the Reading Manifesto was published not so long ago in Ljubljana. In it, the authors call for maintaining and developing deep reading skills in a situation where digital technologies are rapidly changing our way of life. They are confident that reading shapes our thinking and behavior, and their future is closely connected with the future of our society. After all, “war is what happens when language fails.” Absolutely true, but it’s important to add one more thing. It is books and only books that give absolute freedom. After all, both the reader and the writer, unlike other types of culture and mass culture, are not limited by anything. This is why books are destroyed, to take away a person’s freedom, so that the slave will be satisfied with his slavery. Ray Bradbury protested against such a society. We too should protest against such a society.