As this may possibly be trending: Farenheit 451

Ah, dystopia...such a rare goal. Inevitable or brought about by conspiration? Who knows, and nowadays, who even cares?

Anyway, this came across my "worldspace" today and I thought I would share it for those who do not Reddit; Twitter; Facebook or INTERNET!

"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 to 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, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals." "Yes, but what about the firemen, then?" asked Montag. "Ah." Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. "What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. 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? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me."

It comes from the novel Farhenheit 451:

Over-sensitivity is something we should try to overcome I think.

It seems relevant to the world today.

I just wanted to share.

Just a little too close to home

originally posted by: PhyllidaDavenport
Just a little too close to home

I hope there would be a solution, we are intelligent creatures after all...

a reply to: Jonjonj

I presume from history that everything will go full circle and start all over again. Seems to be the way

Good find jonjonj. Those sf writers did not just write for thrills and tech. A number of them wrote with acute awarness of social trends and patterns in building their future scenarios. You found one here.

Another from the same novel was the future of tv. In 451, though written in 53 near the birth of television, Bradbury could see where it was going. He visioned screens the size of a wall at at a time when most home screens were 9 to 12 inches.. He also forecast ''inter-active'' viewing, involving the viewer into the action on the screen.

"Overly-sensitive?" "Ask me to smoke elsewhere?"
"What about boundaries?" "How about you go outside?"

It's really hard to be next to each other when both of us are being abrasive.

If we can learn how to be less abrasive toward others, others will learn how to be less abrasive toward us?

We all forget the universe is centered around each of us, (ego-self) I will share my universe with you. Will you share your universe with me?

The hard part is finding those who are willing to follow the same ideology.

a reply to: Jonjonj

Cut the details of the book "1984" involving the destruction and rewriting of history into this and you have a fully rounded future.

I always thought the present seemed more like Fahrenheit 451 than 1984. Everyone wears earplugs all the time and immerses themselves in entertainment, intelligence is looked down on, everyone is drugged into stupidity, books may not be actively being burned but there's mass censorship of knowledge and much of it is regularly destroyed. I think I might reread it. It's been a while. It's one of my favourite books. I really enjoy Ray Bradbury's stories.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: Jonjonj

Cut the details of the book "1984" involving the destruction and rewriting of history into this and you have a fully rounded future.

Nah, there's no reason to burn books when no one reads them.

And there's no need to rewrite history when no one cares to know what's already written.

originally posted by: Aliensun
a reply to: Jonjonj

Cut the details of the book "1984" involving the destruction and rewriting of history into this and you have a fully rounded future.

www.imdb.com...