Remembering Memorial Day…Or Not
As a point of clarification for my non-American readers, Memorial Day here in the United States is a day (the last Monday of May) reserved to remember those soldiers who have died in a war. Being someone whose father served–but never died–in the military, people often assume that Memorial Day must have been a holiday held in high esteem in my family home. This assumption would be a false one, on account that right up to the day he died (in a hospital bed, not a war zone), my father expressed only two positions about his past military service:
- The military sucks.
- Everybody involved with the military sucks.
- Anybody who disagrees about the military sucking can kiss his [meaning my father's] ass.
Having never been in any armed service, I have little to confirm or deny his sentiment; hence, I’ll refrain from making any definitive statements on the matter one way or the other, lest I’ll be guilty of speaking from complete ignorance. [But I should mention the fact that my father was drafted into service in Vietnam, rather than having volunteered, probably goes a long way in explaining his contempt for all things military related.]
I’ve never really understood the value of patriotism (see here), and I’m wondering how much my family’s pessimism towards the armed service had to do in fostering that disconnect for me. If someone reading this happens to be one of the many Americans who view this day as one of remembrance for their fallen family members and fellow countrymen, then I sincerely wish you all the best in your celebrations, and I hope it gives you the solace and comfort you seek. For me, this is a day to remember that not everybody who has been in the military was there out of patriotic or idealistic conviction, and not all leave it convinced that their service was a noble act. My father may have been in the minority of soldiers who believed his service was a shameful moment in his life, but I doubt he was/is the only one. And I’d care to wager that there have been quite a few people who died in battle feeling the same way. These men and women did a job they didn’t like or felt much pride in doing, so I won’t patronize their memories by speaking about how great and courageous their armed service was. Instead, I’ll just give them a silent nod in understanding, and not gawk in condescending admiration.
Prioritizing Our Children’s Education and Success
As I’ve mentioned before, this upcoming week will be my last one in the teaching profession, and before I say goodbye to it all I feel that I need to say something while it still holds enough relevance in my life (lest I lose all interest within the next few weeks).
If you’re a teacher, you will undoubtedly be faced with the challenge of trying to educate students who are convinced that they are simply too stupid to understand the material. Causing them to retreat to less challenging things, and give up on the subject that’s giving them grief altogether.
I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard the words, “I can’t do it. I’m not smart enough,” from seemingly intelligent and well-adjusted young adults. The reason is that they have somehow stumbled onto this idea that intelligence is by necessity an innate trait that a person has to be born with in order for it to be of any use. This causes them to become self-conscious about their own intellectual capabilities whenever they’re faced with information that takes time and effort to grasp, which can prove to be a real obstacle to those of us whose responsibility it is to educate and nurture their intellectual growth.
I learned all of this pretty early in my first semester of teaching, two years ago, just by talking to the students in all my classes after a collectively not-too-stellar performance on the very first exam I had ever given. Initially, my goal was to see what I was doing wrong as a teacher, so that I can adjust my lectures and style to better serve the students in my class. Well, pretty quickly it became apparent that what we were primarily dealing with was a self-confidence problem; they didn’t think they could do it, so they didn’t bother trying. Thus, I came up with the following statement, which I force my students to write, date, and sign, before every review and every test/quiz I give:
“Repetition breeds familiarity, familiarity breeds expertise. No ‘innate’ intelligence is required to learn a trade of any complexity. Nor does being an expert in any one field indicate favorably on a person’s overall critical thinking skills.”
The goal is to emphasize how an essential step to learning is repetition; they have to repeat, and repeat, the basic facts of the study material, until it’s locked in their memory. Because this is how you become familiar with any piece of information, by being exposed to it over and over again. Once a person feels confident enough about knowing the details of the subject, then they can start thinking critically about it through a thorough analysis and critique of the material. It sounds tiresome, but the truth is that once someone gets into the habit of doing this, it becomes second nature. However, the problem is that young minds need guidance from educators to reach this stage, and in many ways I feel that the structure of the school system is leveled against providing students the attention they need.
Like students, teachers are rewarded for any extracurricular activities they are engaged in. Coach a team, sponsor a club, organize an event, these are the sort of things teachers are encouraged to take part in in order to show the school administrators that they are productive members of the school community. But, in my opinion, these sort of nonacademic engagements on the part of the school faculty all too often result in creating a neglectful trend towards the actual job we are hired to do; i.e. teach the students the subject we are hired to teach. I cannot express in words how much it infuriates me to overhear my (soon to be former) colleagues mention that a good third of their students are not performing well in class, but instead of even attempting to amend that problem, they’d rather flaunt about how they spent all afternoon helping their club/team of interest with some triviality or another (which the club members could have easily done without their assistance). Let me get this straight, you can take a whole afternoon to help a group of already responsible young adults pick out what color your new club/team shirts will be, but you cannot make the effort to offer one hour of tutorials for the struggling students in your class? You cannot put together one or two more extra-credit assignments to motivate these struggling students to get their grade average up?
“What are you talking about?” some may protest, “If we just give out extra-credit to failing students, we are rewarding there laziness, and thereby failing to educate them anyway.”
Yes, and explain to me how giving up and offering them no hope to improve their grades midway through the semester helps their education. Will it teach them discipline, or will it cause them to shrug and say, “Well, I’m failing anyway, so who cares what happens from here on out?” Also, I am not suggesting just to give out random extra-credit, I’m asking for you to create customized assignments to specifically inspire interest in the struggling student towards the subject. Yeah, that will require you to go the extra mile and have a substantive discussion with the failing kids, and figure out what sort of things will motivate said individual students. But guess what?–It’s your job to figure out how to educate the children in your class; that’s why you’re an educator. And if it takes up too much time, and keeps you from sponsoring or coaching this and that club or team, that’s too fucking bad–deal with it.
Additionally, extra-credit is only one solution of many that’s on the table here. You’re smart (or at least you’re paid to pretend to be), get creative. Moreover, what teachers ought to be doing is tackling the problem at the first sign of trouble. Quizzes are meant to tell us the students’ progress between tests, not serve as fillers to fluff up our grade books. And if the quizzes at the start of the semester of my classes are substandard, guess what we’re going to be doing in the class sessions leading up to the actual tests: review, review, review (which includes proper study habits). Again, I understand that we are expected to cover a certain amount of material in each unit by an approximate time period. But how exactly can you move on to the next unit when a noteworthy amount of the people in your class aren’t grasping the unit you just finished? How much time will you be taking away from the course material you’re trying to rush through, because your students still haven’t figured out the essentials from the last lecture? And review sessions can easily be arranged outside of regular class time, so no course time need be sacrificed.
I know this whole post has been one long rant (and I apologize if it comes of sounding snarky), but this is something that I’ve been keeping inside for a while now. The way so many teachers seem to prioritize their own interests in school, annoys me to no end. And, yes, some students (I’m told) are essentially unreachable, but I think such a conclusion should be made after one has truly exhausted all avenues. Otherwise, you might just be making excuses for your own indolence and failures.
Why “The AntiNietzsche”?
Every now and then, I will get the occasional email asking me to clarify why exactly I refer to myself as “The AntiNietzsche”, when in much of my writings my goal doesn’t appear to be aimed at negating the man’s philosophy at all; indeed, I often seem to be simply clarifying Nietzsche’s viewpoints with little overt criticism. Hitherto, my standard reply to these sort of inquiries was to direct the questioner to the fifth and sixth paragraph of my About page, thinking that the brief explanation offered there is enough to satisfy curious lurkers. However, now that we are nearly nine months into this blogs conception–and with the customary labor pains making me feel maternally protective of my creation–I see that the quick few sentences I have penned on this subject might be too vague to really explain the basic motivation behind my online moniker; hence I’ll try to do better here with a broader summary of why I call myself The AntiNietzsche, despite the discrepancies some have attributed to my use of the name.
- I don’t accept the idea that being a Nietzschean is even possible, since to follow Nietzsche’s philosophy to the letter would make you subject the the will and interests of another person (if you’re doing what Nietzsche is telling you to do, you are not creating your own value, and therefore, are by definition amongst the ranks of the lowly plebeians, who steal the ideas of others and in turn degrade them by their innate mediocrity). But to set out and create your own values would inevitably lead you to affirm things that are antithetical to Nietzsche’s greater philosophy, which makes it equally impossible to refer to yourself as a Nietzschean, since you are proposing things that are incompatible with Nietzsche’s own thinking.
- The nature of how Nietzsche presents his arguments makes it difficult to write a straightforward rebuttal without first laying out the often deeply complex narrative Nietzsche sets up to illustrate his greater points. This means that if my commentary is going to be worth anything, I have to outline the philosopher’s thought process first, and I have to do so thoroughly, which is why my critiques of any particular point Nietzsche makes in support of his position can almost always be found within the actual analyses I post. Furthermore, I know that a lot of people have a knee-jerk hostility towards Nietzsche and unjustly presuppose that anything he has written is evil, malicious, and nasty; I am not one of those people, and I will not hastily look to denounce something Nietzsche wrote as wrong (and “bad”) simply because it might stand counter to my subjective values and preferences. Being the AntiNietzsche does not oblige me to go along with any personal issue people have with the implications of Nietzsche’s philosophy, because as far as I’m concerned whether I like or dislike any position is irrelevant in determining the reality of said position (and Nietzsche did, in my opinion, get plenty of things right about human nature and our structuring of social values).
- Just as plenty of people are hostile towards Nietzsche because they personally dislike what he has to say, some people also have a romanticized view of the man that I think is often based on a distilled reading of his work. In these cases it is usually best to simply present and cite what Nietzsche actually said in contrast to what admirers think he said. Thereby, a thorough analysis becomes the most powerful critique of all, and my own pontificating on the prose becomes redundant.
I’m sure if I dig deeper I’ll find more reasons to explain why I have set up Friedrich Nietzsche as my contra-namesake, but I think this (combined with what I have previously said in my About page) should be enough to curtail the ongoing stream of emails I’ve so far been getting on this topic–or at least give me something more meaty to link to the next time I’m asked to explain my name.
To address the inquire of whether or not I have an admiration for Nietzsche, the answer is that it depends on what one means by admiration. I admire the man’s polemical style and his methodology in analyzing and challenging sociocultural values. I hold in high regard his willingness to scrutinize subject matters that few would see proper to call into question (namely, his assessment of pity as a immorally decadent perversion of human virtue). And, to be honest, I believe that the highest respect I could give the man is to equally scrutinize and challenge his views, as he did to those of so many others.
That is why I am The AntiNietzsche.
Agony By Eye Contact
I have always been told that I have an eye contact problem. Now, when most people hear this, they assume that I mean how I have trouble maintaining eye contact. However, my apparent problem is the exact opposite; I’m told that I make too much eye contact with people who discourse with me.
It is one complaint that has followed me all throughout my childhood (and subsequent adult years), by people alleging that I am not showing them proper respect because I insist on “staring” at them as we talk. Yet, despite numerous attempts to remedy this supposed faux pas of mine, I have never really been able to figure out what the socially acceptable amount of eye contact is supposed to be. Hence, what results is me trying to simultaneously give someone my complete attention, while worrying that I have given her/him too much attention, and made her/him feel uncomfortable because of it.
The reason I have always been inclined to make direct eye contact with whomever I happen to be speaking to at the moment, is my desire to hear and understand every word that is being spoken to me by said individual. I make the assumption that if you find it worthwhile to approach me in conversation about a topic, you want me to actually listen to what you have to say, and not nod my head and shift my eyes aimlessly, looking for a distraction to avoid looking at your eyes.
The strangest part is that when I’m confronted about my intense eye contact habit, and told that I’m being rude to the person whose words I’m trying to hear, my sincere request to get some constructive feedback on the matter is always met with scorn. “You should already know why it’s obviously wrong,” is the answer I usually get, which is obviously asinine since I obviously don’t know. The second most common answer is that it makes the person I’m speaking to uncomfortable, which though reasonable, still doesn’t validate the notion that my behavior is wrong. Breaking the routine of a person with obsessive compulsive disorder will definitely make the person afflicted with OCD uncomfortable, but doing so is a necessary step in getting the person to break away from her/his compulsion (assuming the person wants to break from it). In that same regard, how can I be sure that it is not society’s aversion to eye contact that is the problem here? I know from my experience as a teacher that students who actually look at me as I’m lecturing tend to retain more information, than those who never lift their heads from the paper in front of them. This is because communication is not strictly verbal, so being told to listen with just my ears and never my eyes comes across as a strange demand to me, since I know that I will register more of what you’re saying if I look at you while we’re conversing. Do you not want me to grasp and thoroughly contemplate everything you have to say?
And, yes, I’m aware that there are people who have different kinds of social anxieties and communicative disorders, who are physically and psychologically incapable of making eye contact with others. But I have a hard time believing that the vast majority of people I happen to come across in casually conversation fall into this category. Also, as someone who suffers from stage fright, I can totally understand the desire to not have people gawk at you incessantly while I’m giving a talk. However, the issue I’m referring to here is limited strictly to a one-on-one conversation, usually started by someone approaching me to discuss a topic s/he feels is important enough to speak to me about. The idea that it is impolite to maintain eye contact with someone who has chosen to speak with me, baffles me to no end, and honestly makes me wonder about the state of our self-worth as a people, when we are so easily unnerved and intimidated by anyone who dares to closely observe and pay attention to what we have to say.
Despite having said all this, I do constantly try to accommodate to people’s desires and limit the amount eye contact I give to a person during conversation, but I really wish someone would give me the guidelines to how much is too much, or not enough, since I obviously am not able to figure it out on my own.
Dentists are Evil
I just woke up from my post-dental appointment nap, and the feeling in my mouth is finally starting to return back to normal. Even though I haven’t been to the dentist in some time, no major problems were found. But since I’m still determined to take advantage of my health benefits while I still have them, I insisted on an all around cleaning to get my choppers to their shiniest tone possible. For this, I received three shots to both sides of my mouth and two to the center (my teeth may not be damaged, but they are naturally sensitive).
When it was all over, and with my mouth feeling like a puffed up beach ball, I asked the good doctor if I could have a lollipop from the bowl on the counter. He smiled and politely said, “No, you’re too old for that.” Then he left.
You can never be too old for lollipops.
Evil. That is the only word to describe such an injustice. And because I know that the only thing necessary for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing, I reached into the bowl on my way out and took a piece of the denied candy. Rest easy citizens, justice is restored once more in the universe.
[Note: All page numbers accompanying any quotations in this post are from the cited work listed in the bibliography.]
When it comes to examining the world around us, most people find it impossible not to let their ideals of how the world should be influence their view of how the world actually is. To the individual, the ideals s/he project onto the world are not just some arbitrary concepts, but the very mode by which a person’s identity can be defined; it is in this mindset that ideologies are created. And once one’s ideology–one’s ideals–become a personal cause, the greatest difficulty confronting the individual will not be finding the means by which to further this cause, but maintaining the sketchy line between one’s greater identity and one’s circumscribed ideology separate; to keep the former from fully succumbing to the latter.
Set in the backdrop of 1950s war afflicted Vietnam, the prominent theme that runs through Graham Greene’s war novel The Quiet American, is the omen of letting one’s ideals of life take precedents over life itself. This message is explored through the contrasting characters of Thomas Fowler and Alden Pyle. The former (Fowler) is a cynical, middle-aged British reporter, who views his role in the warring country as staunchly nonaligned with any side or ideology, stating, “It has been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved” (page 28). Pyle, on the other hand, is an impressionable, idealistic young American, enchanted with the romantic idea that it is his duty to help spread democracy to the oppressed parts of the world. [I should note that at the time the book was published, 1955, the conflict in Vietnam was still predominantly a struggle between the French (who had up to then held the country as a colony), and the Vietnamese Communists looking to end France's colonial rule and establish an independent (communist) state; during all of this, America's official role in the region was still much subtler than what it would become in the 1960s and 70s.]
Throughout the plot, Fowler refers to Pyle as innocent, to describe the way the young man viewed the world and the childlike affect this has on him:
I was to see many times that look of pain and disappointment touch his eyes and mouth when reality didn’t match the romantic ideals he cherished, or when someone he loved or admired dropped below the impossible standard he had set.
Characters like Pyle are not complicated or hard to explain. He is someone who has been educated to venerate and see the absolute nobility in the notions he has come to value. In the book, ideas of freedom and democracy are as tangible to the young American, as any object or person. Unsurprisingly, this puts him at odds with the pessimistic Fowler, who scoffs at the youngster, “I laugh at anyone who spends so much time writing about what doesn’t exist–mental concepts” (page 94). He is a reporter, first and foremost, and his job is to observe and report the unfiltered facts of the situation. At times, the reader is left wondering how much of Fowler’s cynicism stems from having observed and reported on so much despair in the world, that the promises of hope offered up by any ideology seem too hollow in light of life’s suffering to even bothering considering. This sentiment is best captured when Fowler and Pyle are stuck in hostile territory, and the two engage in a heated discussion about Pyle’s idealistic convictions; the exchange begins with Fowler stating:
“Sometimes the Viets have a better success with the megaphone than a bazooka. I don’t blame them. They don’t believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren’t interested.”
“They don’t want Communism.”
“They want enough rice,” [Fowler says]. “They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want [...] If I believed in your God and another life, I’d bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they’ll be growing paddy in these fields, they’ll be carrying their produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats” (pages 94-95).
Fowler understands that Pyle’s hopes and dreams for the Vietnamese people come from benign intentions (page 133), but he has little patience in humoring the idea that the underlying motivation of the idealists behind all the virtues the young man treasures is little more than naive armchair philosophizing. Nonetheless, Pyle holds study to his belief that his principles are of benefit for the people, in contrast to the alternatives being offered:
“They’ll be forced to believe what they are told, they won’t be allowed to think for themselves.”
“Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?”
“You talk as if the whole country were peasant. What about the educated? Are they going to be happy?”
“Oh no,” [Fowler says], “we’ve brought them up in our ideas. We’ve taught them dangerous games, and that’s why we are waiting here, hoping we don’t get our throats cut [...] Isms and ocracies. Give me facts” (page 95).
To the reader, a great bit of irony comes from the fact that Fowler’s own anti-ideology stance, sounds much like an ideology in and of itself; a staunch conviction to remain untainted by the stains of ideals. Fowler himself appears to notice this problem, and quickly amends, “I don’t take sides. I’ll be still reporting whoever wins” (page 96). Pyle is unconvinced of the sincerity in Fowler’s words, and pointedly remarks how his apathy to which side (i.e. ideology) wins the war, conflicts with his statements about individual value:
“Do you want everybody to be made in the same mould? You’re arguing for the sake of arguing. You’re an intellectual. You stand for the importance of the individual as much as I do” (page 97).
To which Fowler bitingly responds:
“Don’t go on in the East with that parrot cry about a threat to the individual soul. Here you’d find yourself on the wrong side–it’s they who stand for the individual and we just stand for Private 23987, unit in the global strategy” (page 97).
Fowler’s point is that the idea of military endeavors standing in as the great defenders of the individual, when military personal are by necessity trained to eschew their individuality for the sake of becoming a monolithic unit, is a highly facetious proposition. Furthermore, one can deduce from Fowler’s tone that he views the individual to be an entity that exists in the moment, for the moment; thus ideologies (and the ideals they are founded on), which perpetually aim to always establish a desired state of existence for some future condition, are innately antithetical to the interests of the individual.
Despite his animosity with Pyle’s idealistic views, Fowler does not consider the American to be the cause of this problem he has with ideological thinking, but a consequence of it. And as a consequence, Pyle is doomed to give the necessary sacrifice to the cause he chose to allow to define him as a person:
“They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair’s about, and you gave him money and York Harding’s books on the East and said, ‘Go ahead. Win the East for Democracy.’ he never saw anything he hadn’t heard in a lecture-hall, and his writers and his lecturers made a fool of him. When he saw a dead body he couldn’t even see the wounds. A Red menace, a soldier of democracy” (pages 31-32).
It is easy to philosophize about the world, create values and meaning safely within the confines of one’s head, but it’s when one sets out to make such mental concepts a reality, that it becomes clear how reality is not contingent on the romantic musings you have constructed from your desk. Yet, ideologies aren’t really dependent on reality either, they are based on further mental constructs, limited solely by one’s conception of possibilities; aimed at what situation can be achieved, not what the situation currently is. And if it weren’t for our conviction that reality is negotiable, would humanity ever have accomplished as much as it did? Did we not, in our brief history as a species, constantly redefine and reevaluate what is possible–what is attainable in reality? Ideals are dangerous in the way they can consume a person’s self-identity, but without ideals would we have no prospect for betterment as a whole? It may be true that reality simply is what it is, and not what we want it to be, but if we can convince enough people to believe otherwise–to subscribe to the ideals and values we wish to promote–does it really matter what reality is anyway? The strict definition becomes relative and redundant–for most of us.
Bibliography
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. Penguin Books: New York, 1955 (1973 reprint).
“Ah-ha! So my devious plan is working.”
Some of you guys sure do take a very close reading of my Nietzsche essays.
Is it just me or are your nietzsche posts filled with subtle critiques of religion. I know that your anaylsing nietzsche’s writings, but sometimes it sounds like you are putting in your own subtle jabs.
I guess I could say that you might be reading too deeply into things, but I’d rather respond by saying:
Stay thirsty my friends 
“This is the end, my only friend the end…”
Remember two months ago when I mentioned that the school I teach at will be conducting layoffs at the end of this semester? No?–Well, you got some nerve not reading through my entire archive, mister. You sicken me!
Anyway, the official termination letters won’t be sent out until this Friday, but because the school administrators were so impressed with my great prom night chaperoning work, they decide to give me a two days heads-up (ain’t that sweet of ‘em). I’ll try to summarize my talk with the vice-principal the best I can:
“Blah, blah, you’re awesome, blah. You’re a great asset to the school…something about education and growth…blah…I don’t think we could be more satisfied with your work. More blahs. We know you’re performing exceptionally as a teacher from the excellent performance of your students over the last two years…something about some quota sheet I didn’t understand…one more flattery just to get us off the ground. However…”
Is there really a point in paying attention to anything before the however? I don’t think so, but I’ll spare you close caption transcript and will simply reiterate the unfailing rule of teacher employment: last to hire, first to fire.
It was added that if the school had its there way no one would be let go, but since the layoffs are district-wide, their hands are tied. From their standpoint it makes more sense to fire the relatively young guy, because I have a better chance of finding reemployment in the market, and also because I don’t have much of a pension to worry about (unlike the senior teachers who are closer to retirement). Personally, I see the logic in it, and to be honest, I think I need a change of scenery anyway.
Now that I know what’s coming (I will be officially let go June 1st), there is only one thing left for me to do: mooch off the system while I still can. I have all by health benefits for the next two and a half weeks, so for the next few days I’m taking advantage of all the healthcare coverage I currently have (hey, I’ve been paying into it for the last two years, haven’t I).
Dentist I haven’t seen for 14 months, here I come. You’re next optometrist
[As a side note, I don't know who else is getting the boot, or how many, and I won't know until this Friday. But it'll make for a fun time in the teacher's lounge.]
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 & The People’s Tyranny
[Note: All page numbers accompanying any quotations in this post are from the cited work listed in the bibliography.]
Like the dystopian novels that precede it (i.e. 1984, Brave New World, etc.), Ray Bradbury’s 1953 Fahrenheit 451 is set in a largely ambiguously dated future, where human society has become subjugated by an undisclosed oppressive force. The book depicts a future whose technological feats have advanced to a high enough pace that it allows the common citizenry to live in relative comfort and bliss; televisions are bigger and brighter, drugs and antidepressants are easily available to ease whatever malady a person may be feeling. But, despite all of these luxuries, the outwardly happiness feels empty and artificial; something is missing from the humane experience. Guy Montag is aware of this void in his life, but is initially unable to determine its source. His occupation as a fireman provides the reader the vital insight necessary to explain the destitute state of the novel’s environment. Because houses (and presumably other structures, too) are designed to be completely fireproof, the duty of the firemen in Fahrenheit 451 is strikingly different from what we normally expect it to be; namely, they start–as opposed to prevent–fires. Moreover, firemen serve to specifically find and burn books (the forbidden contraband in the novel), due to the items having been banned in the distant past.
It doesn’t take long for the reader to realize that the message the author is trying to convey is the importance of imagination and creativity (i.e. literature) in making mankind feel wholly human. Thus, the book’s protagonist, Montag, represents the isolated figure in society, who is being deprived of something he requires to truly function and understand the world around him properly (in this case, that something is the rigor and critical thinking invoked by the at times inspiring, at times agonizing, words of literature). Although this theme of being unable to live a fulfilling life absent of books and substantive prose is an interesting concept to explore, the part that really makes the novel stand out from others in its genre, is the way the author chooses to detail the genesis of the decadent state his characters are living in.
Early on, the narrative vaguely implies that the source of the repression of books in Montag’s society is some sort of governmental power, as seen by the comment his superior, Captain Beatty, makes about the state of mind of any person that sees fit to challenge the ban in place, “Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us” (page 33). The mention of the “government” seems to indicate that the oppressor is the standard Big Brother type, ruling decrees from above. However, as the story progresses, the reader quickly finds out that this initial assumption, though reasonable, is completely false in light of the reality of things.
Montag’s anxiety about his life and work eventually causes him to start to explore the written words in the books he has up to that point ignited for a living. It is suggested that Captain Beatty is fully aware of Montag’s illegal activities, leading to a revealing exchange between the two, which sets the tone for the narrative from there on out, and sets Fahrenheit 451 apart from its dystopian precursors.
The exchange begins with Beatty openly telling Montag about the origins of the nationwide ban on books:
“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 pastepudding norm / Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending” (page 54).
What Beatty is essentially describing is the advent of the modern life. As technology has become faster, and our dependency on technology has forced us to adapt our pace right along with it; our attention span has decreased significantly. Readers in the 21st Century will have no problem understanding this, as we trace the impact technological feats like the internet have had on the way we communicate, retain, and process information. [What makes the parallel even more interesting is the fact that Bradbury wrote his book in 1953, with little knowledge of just how much more tech-dependent we were to become in the subsequent decades.] Beatty goes on to explain how this change in technology influenced the way society prioritized itself:
“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophy, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” (page 56).
The focus on simply learning the menial tasks one needs to get by in a job takes away the individual’s burden to challenge, or even contemplate, her/his surroundings with any real depth; one does what one knows, because no one is taught to do anything more. Of course, this routine also leaves people with a certain amount of leisure time, which must be filled with enough distractions, lest someone gets tempted to analyze the surrounding world too seriously. And this is where luxuries come into play–to keep people content, happy, and too comfortable to start upsetting the balancing for everybody else:
“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 moving them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these” (page 59).
The source of the censorship in Montag’s world is not some ominous government figure or organization, it is the people themselves who urged for the ban. As information became readily available to a growing population, the opportunity for offense increased, and the prevalence of offensiveness leads to a decrease in happiness (which can have detrimental affects on the governing order). Books are a cesspool of offensiveness. While the right book–with the right message–can inspire a person to great things, no book’s primary goal is to keep peace amongst differing ideas. Books challenge the person, ridicule his beliefs and convictions, and in turn make him less peaceful. Or as Beatty puts it, “The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navel to be kept clean” (page 57). In a pluralistic society, the desire not to offend is very prominent. But in a free marketplace of ideas the act is practically unavoidable (that which is inspirational and uplifting for one, is insulting to another).
The simple truth is that some ideas are better than others; and some positions are less viably defensible. However, the means by which we determine which is which, is to debate and challenge one another in the public place of ideas. But to challenge is to confront, to confront is to antagonize, and it takes little effort for antagonizing to end at warring. To fully remove the agitation ideas cause, it is best to remove the incentive for them altogether–make each man “the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are mo mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against” (page 58). Yet, even characters like Beatty understand that the artistic spirit of the human mind is naturally drawn to formulating ideas (even if it is often just a recycling of other people’s ideas), thus he explains the prominence of feeding mundane trivia facts to the populace (that offer no opportunity for controversy or critical thought):
“Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘fact’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving” (page 61).
[I feel the need to add as a side note that, while I can appreciate Bradbury's appeal for the need books provide in creating minds that can evaluate the world critically, it should also be mentioned that simply reading works of literature, and than regurgitating trivial quotes back to others as your own is not the standard of a critical thinker; more than read, one must learn to dissect and scrutinize the words of books.]
The reason why I consider Fahrenheity 451 as separate from books like Orwell’s 1984, is the fact that it challenges the popular notion that oppression always stems from the ruling class’s thirst for power. The will of the people can be equally tyrannical, and when convinced enough of its own sanctity, it won’t hesitate to impose its will on those who dare deviate from the established program. The common man is not necessarily the noble spirit of humanity, but the oppressor looking to subjugate others for the sake of keeping himself content:
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, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time (page 58).
Once public opinion submits to its desire to be censored and guarded and watched over, it doesn’t take much for opportunistic would-be rulers to step in and erode away at the individual’s liberties to consolidate their own power. But one should not forget who sanctions their authority to begin with, and laid the foundation for the systematic coercion that follows. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury makes it clear who he considers “the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority” (page 108). The question that remains now is, how readily can oppression be recognized (let alone combated) if it is being sustained from the bottom-up?
Bibliography
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Ballantine Books: New York, 1953 (1996 reprint).
