We're Amusing Ourselves to Death | Fahrenheit 451

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“If you don't want a man unhappy, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none” - Ray Bradbury (spoken by Beatty)

Dystopias and Apocalypses are never too far from the collective imagination of a society. From ancient Rome to Victorian Britain, there are always writers anxiously warning about the ways they think the world could come crashing down.

Sometimes the collapse comes from a perceived loss of moral fibre, sometimes it comes from a superior foe, or a dictatorial political party. But in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, it comes from the state’s terrifying and total control of information. Books and unapproved ideas, wherever they are found, are burnt to ashes by agents of the state. And even more frightening, this happens with the near-total consent and support of the general populace.

In a world where how we handle, disseminate, and process information is changing at an alarming pace, I think it is worth looking back at this 20th century classic, to see what it can teach us about our own world, and where our own societies may go dangerously wrong.

But let’s start with a brief bit of background to the novel and its world, before exploring what makes Fahrenheit 451 so terrifying, and remarkably prophetic. Be warned, spoilers lie ahead.

1. Fahrenheit 451: A Brief Synopsis

Fahrenheit 451 is not a particularly long novel, and yet it crams quite a lot in. So I’ll start by explaining the general setting of the world, and then go through the important plot points, just so we are all up to speed going into the analysis.

The setting of Fahrenheit 451 is the United States of America at some point in the indeterminate future. The most famous feature of this dystopia is that almost all books have been banned. Technology has accelerated to such an extent that people have lost interest in books altogether, and the state considers them dangerous. As a result, anyone caught in possession of a book is arrested, and their house burnt to the ground by the firemen. These “firemen” are a twisted development of the firefighters of today: they no longer put fires out, but intentionally start them to destroy as many books as possible. As far as the government is concerned, books are full of confusing ideas that will only harm the general populace, and the people of America consume pre-approved media relayed to them by immersive television systems.

The story follows one of these firemen, Guy Montag, as he gradually becomes disillusioned with both his job and the society his fires uphold. This begins when he meets a young woman named Clarisse, who strikes up a conversation with him on his walk home from work. Clarisse is from a strange family who do not behave like everyone else. They still talk, debate, discuss, and do not engage with the new technological advances that others adore so much. At the same time, Montag’s wife Mildred attempts to end her own life, yet refuses to talk about it or even acknowledge it has happened. It is almost like she does not know how to put her dissatisfaction into words. Montag interrogates his own life: is he really content, or is he just numb? The final nail in the coffin for him is when he and his fellow firemen burn down a house on his next shift. Rather than be arrested or flee, the woman who owns the house and the books within refuses to leave, choosing to perish with the books, rather than betray her principles. Montag begins to steal books from the houses the firemen burn down, and keeps them in his own home. It is revealed that Clarisse died in a car accident, and her family have moved away.

Montag calls in sick for work the next day but his captain, Beatty, shows up at his house to check in on him. Beatty delivers a long speech about how books came to be banned and how the firemen came to burn them. He heavily insinuates that he knows Montag has been stealing books, and he has only a limited time to turn back from this path before dire consequences will be visited upon him and his family.

Montag is unswayed by Beatty’s threats, and sets out to meet a man he suspects of harbouring old books, who he never reported to the authorities for reasons he cannot quite put his finger on. This man, Faber, was an English professor before all the universities were shut down. Together they hatch plans to plant books in the homes of firemen, and to start a printing press. Plans that, unfortunately, will never come to fruition.

The next day Mildred has two friends over, who are discussing the impending war it looks like America will become involved in. They have a callous attitude, seemingly not understanding that human lives are going to be lost. At this point Montag has a breakdown. He recites poetry at them and berates them for their shallow acceptance of society as it exists, causing them to run out of the house.

In order to maintain his cover, and throw Beatty off the scent, Montag hands over one of the books he hoarded, and it is burnt. He and Beatty then have a verbal sparring match about the nature of literature, which I will go into far more detail about later. Beatty maintains that the populace having access to books is too dangerous. The ideas are distressing, and if people are allowed to have different ideas, that is the first step to conflict. Beatty says they must head out to burn down another house where someone has been collecting books. He then drives Montag to his own house, and instructs him to burn it down with a flamethrower. We see Mildred leave the house, refusing to engage with her now criminal husband.

Montag carries out this macabre order, before finally turning the weapon on Beatty, wondering if that is what Beatty wanted all along. Montag’s earpiece is lost in the scuffle, cutting his connection off from Faber. Montag is now on the run.

After an extended chase, Montag manages to lose the police, and finds himself in the American countryside. He remembers hearing some rumours that there were people on the run who travelled the old railway tracks, guarding books and agitating for change, so he heads to the nearest line. After some walking he meets a group of these literary fugitives, led by a man called Granger. He reveals that they do not keep physical books, as this is too dangerous. Books can be burnt, after all. Instead they memorise entire volumes of text, spreading out a vast library’s worth of wisdom between them. They hope that one day, when the time is right, they can reconvene, and put these books back on paper.

At this moment, the war that was briefly mentioned earlier begins, with nuclear devastation raining down on the city Montag just fled. It ends almost as soon as it starts, and civilisation as everyone knew it flickers and dies like a candle. It is unclear what the road ahead looks like for Montag, but he and the other fugitives hope to contribute to rebuilding the world in a better way. So that when the dust settles, there is knowledge, wisdom, and thought, where previously there was simply noise.

It is a simple story and a compelling narrative. There is a reason it is one of the best selling novels of the past 70 years. And I think Bradbury’s world is a lot more complex and nuanced than people tend to give him credit for.

So let’s start with perhaps the most prominent theme in the book, and the first thing that leaps out to most people on a first read: the extreme censorship of Bradbury’s state.

2. The Philosophy of Censorship

20th century dystopian fiction almost seems dominated by themes of censorship and surveillance. In 1984 Winston Smith is kept under near-constant monitoring by the Party in power, who can cart him away to be tortured and executed at any moment. In Brave New World the ideas that can be expressed are limited by strict cultural taboos and mind control, and any who broke them were shipped off to exile. And yet each of these dystopias treat censorship in importantly different ways. In 1984 it is enforced by the secret police. In Brave New World most people just don’t think to express dissenting ideas because of psychological control mechanisms attacking their very will. But in Fahrenheit 451 we see some fascinating ways that censorship is both motivated and enforced that seem importantly different from these other worlds, and this is worth examining.

The main mouthpiece we have for the philosophy of the state in Fahrenheit 451 is Beatty, the captain of Montag’s fire department. According to him, the trouble with books, and the ideas they contain is twofold: they encourage dangerous independent thought, and they are, in themselves, worthless.

According to Beatty’s philosophy, deeper ideas engender disagreements between people, and these disagreements spill over into conflict or harm. They thus fly in the face of what a healthy society really needs: unity. An almost fetishistic exaltation of unity pervades the world of Fahrenheit 451. It is to the point where the simple act of going for a walk late at night is seen as suspicious, and a cause for the fire department to investigate your home. Beatty justifies all of this based on what is commonly known as the “harm argument for censorship”. This is a pretty straightforward idea: people justify censorship on the grounds that it will cause harm. And Beatty is probably right that in the short term the effect of millions of people suddenly being exposed to thousands of new ideas probably will cause conflict. There will be disputes over policy, politics, and social organisation. There will be arguments and maybe even fights over the value of art, what is worth paying attention to, and how we should treat one another. People will care about things, and with that care will inevitably come conflict. After all, as Rene Girard points out, conflict occurs when two people care about the same thing, to different ends.

The dangerous assumption Beatty makes is that the status quo is inherently better than the temporary conflict that might arise if people were exposed to new ideas. It is very similar to the point made in Thomas Hobbes’ landmark work Leviathan. Hobbes wrote this work in the midst of the English Civil War, and run through the essay is a total distrust in the ability of people to resolve conflicts amicably. As he put it:

”Competition of riches, honour, command, or other power inclineth to contention, enmity, and war, because the way of one competitor to the attaining of his desire is to kill, subdue, supplant, or repel the other”

In other words, where there is difference in aim, there is violence. Hobbes thus recommended that we place our trust in a single sovereign, who will wield almost absolute power. While Hobbes gives positive arguments for why he thinks this would be desirable, Leviathan also has a strong sense of “the alternative is far worse” about it. For Hobbes, people in groups are simply not well-equipped to share power, or to participate in government. Submission to a wiser, higher authority is then the sensible course of action. Beatty’s perspective makes sense if we consider him a true Hobbesian: someone primarily concerned with preventing society from falling into chaos AT ANY COST.

This also explains why he views human works like poetry, novels, ethical philosophy, free art, reflection, and discussion as fundamentally useless. In what way would the proliferation of these viewpoints bolster the strength and stability of the state? Probably not at all! For him, it is much safer to allow a very narrow set of views among the general populace. Besides, as he repeatedly states: it will only distress them when their new theories cause them to have those oh-so-upsetting disagreements.

Of course, there is a reason why most people get the feeling that Beatty’s analysis of the world is missing something. And they would not be alone. Even thinkers who have emphasised notions of collective duty and obligation, like Leo Strauss, accuse the Hobbesian view on politics as having an unduly pessimistic standpoint on human nature. Someone like Beatty reduces down the field of politics and social organisation into just a matter of preventing collapse. This fear-based framework heavily implies a kind of blunt authoritarianism. Hannah Arendt went one step further, and criticized the Hobbesian view as leading to everyday people seeing themselves as completely divorced from the running of their own societies, tricked into thinking they are purely private entities who are only able to pursue narrow, selfish aims like the accumulation of power. In both cases, Hobbes is charged with an overly restrictive view of humanity, which paints us all as borderline incapable of empathy, fellow-feeling, or higher goals. Beatty’s philosophy similarly reduces humanity down to simply seeking short-term pleasure and pain. Why bother with ideas, when we can remain perfectly entertained without them? Why bother with reflection, when it could bring painful self-examination? Why think about values or creativity or discussion, when there is no immediate benefit to be had in personal pleasure, and it may threaten the social order with a dissenting idea.

This is a very different kind of totalitarian reasoning from The Party in 1984. They explicitly desire power for its own sake, and say they serve no higher mistress than this. But Beatty turns this accusation around on us. For him, we are all power-seeking and hungry for conflict. It is the duty of he and his fellow firemen to ensure we never get our hands on any ideas which might encourage this inherently dangerous nature. It is another thing that sets Fahrenheit 451 apart from a lot of other dystopias. Normally, the people are afraid of the state, but here, the state is just as afraid of its people.

The irony of course is that from what little we see of the wider world of Fahrenheit 451, it is a very violent place. In some of Clarrise’s early interactions with Montag, she says that people her age have turned incredibly violent, even killing one another in some cases. Montag himself is almost run over by a vindictive gang of young men when he is fleeing from the police. So on reflection, it is not quite right to say that the state of Fahrenheit 451 desires peace. While the justification Beatty gives for the oppressive regime is that the state guarantees peace and stability, it is more accurate to say that the state considers the situation peaceful, so long as it is not threatened. There can be substantial violence within its borders, so long as it does not compromise the proper functioning of government. At some point, the strength and authority of the state ceased to be a means to stability, and became an end in itself. And if the strength of the state is an inherently good thing, then why not crush any dissenting ideas? Any potential for independent thought? Why not censor whatever you please? Thinking becomes a new kind of blasphemy, and the churches all turn to the halls of governance.

But despite being the most dramatic aspect of the state’s power in Fahrenheit 451, censorship is only a minor part of their strategy. Perhaps even more important is the information campaign they wage on the minds of their populace.

3. Amusing ourselves to death

In 1985, Neil Postman published an essay called “amusing ourselves to death” where he takes aim at the efect of television on public discourse. According to Postman, the trouble with the television is that it is incredibly adept at holding our attention merely through entertainment value. It is not that complex ideas could never be discussed on television, but that the particular strengths of that medium means they will normally be outcompeted by flashier, more engaging shows. Just as the written word is exceptionally effective at communicating ideas, but it is much more fun to watch a play than simply read a script, a television is better adapted to entertainment than to deep reflection. It plays to the television’s strength. Postman compares this value placed on numb entertainment to soma from Huxley’s Brave New World. There soma is a medicine which dulls people’s sense of sadness and causes them to be happy for a short time. However, I think that the world of Fahrenheit 451 forms a slightly better comparison.

The thing about distraction by media is that it is, fundamentally, distraction by information. That is, it occupies our attention by filling our minds with content that does not enrich us, challenge us, or teach us, but simply appeals to our senses and our short-term emotions. It is not that there is anything inherently wrong with this: entertainment can be great! But in Fahrenheit 451, entertainment has entirely replaced thought, with pretty drastic consequences.

The character who most embodies this is Mildred, Montag’s wife. She spends almost all of her time in her “parlour”. This is a sort of whole-room television with interactive characters which actually respond to her voice. She develops such an attachment to them that she calls them her “family”, even though we are given no reason to believe they are conscious. This is how she fills her days: she watches shows on the parlour, occasionally interacting with them, and then she discusses those shows with her friends. She has become almost addicted to this, to the point where even when Montag says he is ill, and clearly in need of her help, she can barely tear herself away from these screens. If in 1984, the telescreen watched you, in Fahrenheit 451, you watch the telescreen.

And it is staggering the effect this has on Mildred. She is almost completely unable to empathise with the people around her, or form particularly deep relationships. The same goes for her friends. One of them talks about how her husband will likely be drafted in the upcoming war, but she does not mind very much. It is, after all, his life. If he dies, she will simply find someone else. For Mildred and her friends, the parlour and their virtual family fulfil whatever urge for human connection they might have. Or, I should say, they almost do. Because even in the short time we see them, it becomes clear that Mildred’s friends have a profound emptiness inside. For a start, at only the slightest provocation from Montag, one of them almost has a complete meltdown, sobbing uncontrollably when he recites poetry. They seem to be vaguely aware that their shallow satsifaction masks an underlying lack, but they avoid this knowledge like the plague. As Kierkegaard might put it: they are at the deepest point in despair. So deep that they are not even aware of its existence. Their despair forms the backdrop to their world, as water does to a fish.

The most extreme suffering is seen in Mildred herself, who attempts to end her own life in one of the first scenes in the novel. When a medical team comes to resucitate her, they casually remark that they get 9 or 10 cases a night like this. The connection Mildred and her friends seek simply cannot be found in the virtual plane. It requires embodied engagement with another conscious person. They do not need to be entertained, they need to connect. I don’t even need to finish the analogy to show how this insight might be useful today. They can each stand in a room full of people, and yet be fundamentally alone. Different philosophers might put this in different ways. Camus might say they are deprived of the shared solidarity needed to face life’s empriness. Axel Honneth might say they lack mutual recognition. Whatever it is, it is slowly dooming the people of Fahrenheit 451 to misery. Again we see the flawed logic of Beatty. Conflict is minimised, but at the cost of an inner void that is just as threatening. The whole of human existence, reduced to meaningless entertainment. As Montag puts it:

“If she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown…a silly empty man near a silly empty woman”

But the worst part of all is that the people asked for this. According to Beatty, the ban on books and on the proliferation of ideas more generally was not imposed from above against the resistance of an angry populace. Rather people got used to easy and entertaining distractions. Engaging with difficult ideas is, by its nature hard. In the short-term, it is so much more relaxing to let ourselves be carried on a wave of pixels and pleasure. Beatty describes this process in detail. First books are cut shorter, then they are turned into two minute summaries, then two line summaries. Then television shows are shortened. Politics consists only of headlines. Quality of information is replaced by quantity. As Beatty himself says:

“Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, and that centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought…

Don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it?”

This is what Harmut Rosa would call the acceleration of information. If the state of Fahrenheit 451’s ultimate aim is to create a compliant and docile populace, this is the flipside of censorship. While censorship prevents people from accessing those oh-so-dangerous ideas, this information overload means that everyone is too busy processing each new opinion, statement, and “fact” flung at them that they eventually just give up. The world is made incomprehensible, and in that confusion they will do what they are told. There is no way to offer up a competing vision for the world, or even come up with a new thought. The discourse of Fahrenheit 451 consists of pure repetition, and that is exactly how Beatty thinks it should be. No disagreement is possible if there is no way to come to your own opinion in the first place.

We can learn a lot from this twin strategy followed by the government of Fahrenheit 451. Its aim is simple: isolate people from independent thought, and then keep them fed on a diet of entertaining, empty bullshit. But I think the most important lesson is that the people did most of this too themselves.

But now I want to examine the effect of all this information control: what does the mind of a citizen in Fahrenheit 451 look like?

4. The unexamined life

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once said that “the unexamined life is not worth living”. He was on trial by his own censorious government at the time for the crime of “corrupting the youth” by exposing them to his dangerous questioning and philosophy. He remained steadfast in his convictions, accepting the death penalty and sticking by his ideals. But why would he be so committed to living and spreading this “examined life”? I think Fahrenheit 451 can help us understand.

The most obvious feature of the citizens in Fahrenheit 451 is that they are almost all completely uncritical. They lose the ability to notice anything wrong with their situation. Faber talks about this when he says part of the value in all this reading and thinking is so that we notice what might be wrong with the world around us. It is telling that one of Granger’s gang of exiles is a professor of ethics. And this makes sense if the people only have access to one perspective. How could they even tell what could change if they’ve never learnt about other civilisations, other theories, other ways of doing things. We never find out whether the elections in Fahrenheit 451 are free and fair, but we do know that the citizens are not particularly interested in the process. Mildred’s friends vote for politicians for seemingly arbitrary reasons, rather than desiring any particular set of policies. It is similar to what Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky call “manufacturing consent”. Because the people of Fahrenheit 451 only have access to certain information, they naturally come to certain conclusions, without the need for much active government repression at all. By depriving the people of even basic critical thought, the state in Fahrenheit 451 ensure compliance without having to lift a finger. It is Socrates’ worst nightmare.

This also means that on the rare occasion where someone does get the sense something is wrong, they can quickly be argued against by a more informed government agent. This is clear in the debate between Beatty and Montag midway through the novel. Beatty and Montag argue about the value of books, with Beatty saying that they are confusing, contradict one another, and cause conflict. From a reader’s perspective, there are thousands of things Montag could say in response to this. He could point out that it is through exploring contrary perspectives that we become informed enough to come to our own opinion. He could argue that confusion is just the pain of initial learning, and that it must be pushed through to discover anything worthwhile. He could say that conflicting ideas may cause conflict, but the alternative is a nagging discontent at living an unexamined life, ignoring every personal and social problem in the reflection of a screen. But to do any of this, Montag would need to already have some skill at picking apart an argument. He would need rhetoric and information and logic. But he has been purposefully deprived of these abilities. So in the exchange, it looks as if Beatty has won, and it could have easily caused Montag to lose confidence in his new worldview. Without critical thought, we are at the mercy of a skilled sophist. Montag knows that Beatty’s arguments are flawed, but he cannot identify why. If it weren’t for this intuition, Beatty could have easily brought him back into the fold.

So far, this is all in line with the government’s ultimate goal: to keep everyone thinking roughly the same thing, with only minimal variation. But we also see the severe emotional effects of being unable to reflect or subject their thoughts to scrutiny. For one thing, it makes their worldviews incredibly fragile. One of the reasons Mildred’s friend breaks down in tears when Montag recites poetry is because the beauty of the work temporarily shatters her picture of the universe. She has no answer to this confrontation, other than to collapse. Since she has never stopped to ask why she holds her beliefs, her peace of mind rests on a house of cards, blown away at the first gust of challenge.

We have already touched upon the emptiness the citizens of Fahrenheit 451 feel. And this inner void is partly caused by their inability to stop and consider ideas. It is no coincidence that one of the works mentioned by Montag is the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. In that book, we see King Solomon reason through his own existential crisis, and gradually resolve it with his faith in God. The particular solution does not matter so much in this context. Rather it is the process Solomon goes through to rid himself of his despair. He uses his wisdom and reason to become more aware of life’s emptiness, and then solve it to his satisfaction. In Fahrenheit 451, the inability to consider ideas, to go through Solomon’s journey, leaves the inhabitants of that world without any solution to their emptiness. It leaves them at the mercy of a bubbling existential dissatisfaction that pumps away in the background without them even noticing.

Eventually this dearth of intellectual resources affects the very depth of experiences that the people of Fahrenheit 451 have access to. As Lisa Feldmann Barrett has theorised in much of her research, language and cognitive structures form the backdrop for how we understand our own emotional states. That is, we learn to interpret certain inner perceptions as “anger”, “happiness”, “sadness” etc. because those are the conceptual categories we use in the societies we grew up in. These categorisations are not arbitrary - they are incredibly useful. In fact, Barrett and her colleague Kristen Lindquist have inferred an interesting implication of this theory: the more detailed our cognitive categorisations of our own emotional states, the better we can understand how we ourselves are feeling. Say I had only two words for how I was feeling. I was either feeling “good” or “bad”. Think of how much information is lost. I cannot consider the energy levels of my emotional states, their relative strength, or think about their connection with my actions in any real depth. On the other hand, if I have a rich vocabulary to describe my feelings, I can have a deeper understanding of my emotional state, and with that understanding comes control. My actions, urges, desires, and more begin to make more sense to me. The connection with books, and particularly novels, is pretty intuitive. In a recent paper by Steven Schwering and colleagues, they establish a relationship between the language used to express emotion in fiction, and improved emotional recognition abilities in the reader. As they put it:

“long-term language experience, and fiction reading, in particular, supports emotion concepts through exposure to these emotions in context”

If they are correct, then the intentional limiting of the conceptual abilities of the people in Fahrenheit 451 does not just impact their ability to understand and change the world around them, it could even make them strangers to themselves. Their own emotions seem mysterious and chaotic, far beyond anything we are likely to see around us today. If Barrett is right that there is a tight link between the richness of our emotional concepts, and our ability to understand our own emotional landscape, then the effective ban on conceptual complexity enacted by the state in Fahrenheit 451 is far more serious than Faber suggests. It is not simply that the people have lost control of their nation - they have lost control of every layer of their minds.

But this is only the personal effect of the state’s regime. If we look closely, we can see even more disastrous consequences of their overall culture.

5. Narcissism and Arrogance

It is a cross-cultural piece of philosophical wisdom that an excessive focus on yourself can lead to misery. We find it in the Christian tradition in the rule of St Benedict, where humility is seen as the path to god. It occurs in many Buddhist Suttas, where the guarding of the ego is presented as bringing only misery in the long term. And the condemnation of self-obsession is a theme of modern day “positive psychology”. So it is notable that the citizens in Fahrenheit 451 often exhibit an almost pathological self-obsession.

Montag notes this after his initial conversation with Clarisse. She takes him completely by surprise because she seems to be interested in him as a person, rather than simply waiting for her turn to speak. This is in stark contrast to the other people he comes across, whose favourite topic is almost always themselves, and who are far more concerned with the appearance of things than attempting to investigate their reality. We see a sort of doubling up of self-obsession. Firstly, people focus on themselves far more than others, at all times, and secondly, they prioritise the public image of themselves over who they are in reality.

The second of these themes is evident in the huge disconnect between how the characters project, and the behaviour they exhibit. The characters in the novel profess that they are happy, but this is more a performance than a report of their genuine emotional state. When Clarisse confronts Montag by asking him directly if he is happy, Montag is lost for words. He tries to dismiss the question. It is only when he stops and thinks that he realises he is actually deeply UNhappy, and this whole time he had merely been putting on a front. It is this realization that begins his transformation from state enforcer to literary rebel.

But Montag is far from the only one to exhibit this behaviour. One of Mildred’s continual refrains through the novel is that she and Montag are happy and successful, so why put that all at risk with Montag’s new book obsession. But this observation flies in the face of facts. If they were happy, why did Mildred want to die? Why do they not connect as people? Why are they each teetering on the verge of collapse? Why is Mildred’s only source of interpersonal love her parlour shows? The people of Fahrenheit 451 are in a constant performance to convince everyone, including themselves, that everything is okay. And they will use every ounce of denial they can muster to maintain this delusion. Montag even suggests that Captain Beatty must have wanted to be killed, since he gave Montag the flamethrower, and then goaded him into using it.

This links quite closely with the modern idea of toxic positivity. This term is used in a variety of different ways, but it almost always involves a cultural taboo around professing that something is not quite right, or that we are feeling anything less than totally happy. It naturally creates a culture of performance, where regardless of how we are actually feeling, we must EXPRESS constant positivity. It almost entails the prioritisation of image over reality. In Fahrenheit 451 the performance has extended so far that the citizens even perform it to themselves. This is symbolically summed up in Mildred mourning the loss of her immersive TV set more than her husband’s arrest. The appearance of perfect relationships valued over the messy business of actually connecting to her husband. Here we see both the extreme prioritisation of image over reality, and self over other all in one. It is the reduction of all human life to an aesthetic display in a shop window.

But this self-obsession of the general populace in Fahrenheit 451 is mirrored by a more insidious kind of pride from the senior agents of the state. Whereas the everyday person in Fahrenheit 451 is simply too concerned with themselves to bother with other people, Captain Beatty goes one step further. He thinks that he knows what is best for every single other person in the country. Self-concern has developed into self-glorification. Beatty has fully embraced a form of intellectual arrogance that justifies his authoritarianism. What could be more unduly overconfident than deciding that all the people in your nation are unfit to process new ideas? That you know better than any of them to such an extent that they do not even need to hear an alternative? Beatty, and the state more generally, imagine themselves as omniscient, knowing in advance what all the best ideas will be, and burning the rest. But this too does not bring the agents of the state happiness, but only fear and insecurity. As we discussed in the first section: the attitude of the government towards its people in Fahrenheit 451 is abject terror. Behind Beatty’s own display of pride, he too is afraid, alone, and seemingly wishing for an end.

Contrasting all of this are the fugitives led by Granger. What sets them apart from the other people in Fahrenheit 451, and the arrogance of the state, is that they value content over presentation, and all exist to serve one another. Their entire quest relies on sharing a communal load. None of them holds their collected knowledge, but together they have entire libraries memorised. If they are to achieve their eventual aim of putting it all back down on paper in happier times, then they must rely on one another to do so. Secondly, the very mechanism their aim relies on is internal. They care about what is in one another’s minds, rather than the appearance of contentment or joy. It is true that they SEEM more melancholic than many of the everyday citizens, but they are not violent towards one another, nor are they on the edge of mental implosion.

They also form a counterpoint to the arrogance of the state. They explicitly do not think that they are important. Instead, Granger describes them as guardians of the ideas in their heads. Rather than imposing one set of approved ideas on other people, they want to teach people how to think for themselves. They are not seeking disciples or followers, but independent minds. There is no indication that the fugitives all agree with the books they memorise. In fact, it is very unlikely considering that many of their ideas will inevitably disagree. But in an act of humility, they recognise that these may be of use to others. Whereas Beatty does not trust people to think, Granger does not trust himself to think for others. That is the crucial difference between these competing philosophies.

But of course, this is only one disagreement between the literary fugitives and the state. Another comes in their approach to a crucial feature of humanity: our differences.

6. An Inferno of The Same

Right the way back in section 2 I briefly mentioned the importance the state in Fahrenheit 451 placed on unity. But it goes far beyond that. The deeper aim here is not simply to make people unified, but to make them the same.

We have already seen a few methods that are used to achieve this. The censorship and control of information mean people never come to substantive disagreements. This minimisation of disagreement is justified on the grounds that it prevents conflict, but there are a number of insidious side effects. First, the world is rendered meaningless and flat. But additionally, the general public become another arm of the state’s power.

I have talked about this before on the channel, but there is a pretty close relationship to the kind of things that bring a sense of meaning, and the kind of thing that makes a good narrative or story. In some ways this is unsurprising: what makes a story compelling will also make a life compelling. This is one reason why so many images of existential Hell rely on the concept of repetition. Camus has the image of SIsyphus rolling a boulder up a hill each day. Solomon has the image of the sun rising and setting and rising again. Dostoevsky thought that asking someone to empty two cups of water into one another over and over again for no reason would drive them mad. In each case there is a cyclical structure that defies narrative resolution. And this cycle relies on everything staying roughly the same. In such situations, there are no important differences in location or time. In the terminology of Mircea Eliade, everything is “made profane” and put on the same level.

In some ways, the banning of books is only the physical manifestation of a much deeper feature of Fahrenheit 451 - a lack of forward momentum or wide narrative to anyone’s life. This sameness is clearly seen in the routines of each character. Montag lives the same day over and over again. He gets up, he burns books, he goes back home, and he does the same the next day. The repetition is so absolute that even ordinary alterations, such as Clarrise talking to Montag on his way to and from work, take him completely by surprise. Mildred spends her days simply consuming information from her televisual system, and talking to her friends. She is so wed to this that when her husband tries to take a day off work for illness, she seems completely shocked. She says “you’ve never been sick before”, as if the concept of change is foreign to her. This complete flattening of every time to one unimportant smudge is an existential recipe for disaster, and contributes to this undercurrent of despair that we keep revisiting. If hope is the general attitude that there is something about the future that is worth continuing for, then the world of Fahrenheit 451 is, technically, hopeless. It is a kafkaesque nightmare of senselessness and repetition, with a bland smile painted on its face.

But this is not the only kind of sameness found in Fahrenheit 451. If this is sameness within someone’s life, there is also sameness between people. Montag even comments on how all the firemen look the same, and share the same “proclivities”. They are all caricatures of manliness, with “black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaven look”. Clarisse remarks that in cafe’s “everyone says the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else”. Mildred and her friends all vote the same way, share the same opinions, and the same routine. The simple act of talking in the evenings is seen as dangerous and subversive. The closest thing we see in the novel to normally, unrebellious chat is the conversation between Mildred and her friends. In an interesting choice by Bradbury, they all repeat certain phrases back to one another. For instance, when one of them is talking nonchalantly about her husband possibly dying in the upcoming war, we get the following exchange:

‘“I’m not worried,” said Mrs Phelps. “I’ll let Pete do all the worrying.” She giggled. “I’ll let old Pete do all the worrying. Not me. I’m not worried.”

“Yes,” said Millie. “Let old Pete do the worrying.”’

We see here both the repetition of thoughts within one person, where Mrs Phelps constantly repeats “I’m not worrying” and “let Pete do all the worrying” and the repetition across people, where Mildred parrots the same phrase back to her. It is what Kierkegaard might call the “levelling” of humankind. It is what Kierkegaard might call the “levelling” of humankind. Neither Mildred nor Mrs Phelps is interested in being an individual - they simply want to repeat the patterns of the other person. They are each striving to simply be a member of what Kierkegaard calls “the public”. An amorphous, abstract idea of “what everyone thinks”. For all his newly acquired outrage, this was also exactly what Montag was doing until about 5 minutes ago. In his first exchange with Clarisse, he dutifully repeats what the fire department has taught him, even when it is patently absurd. Clarisse remarks that he never stops to think before answering, he merely regurgitates catchphrases from his indoctrination. And this is all very much in line with the plan of Beatty and the state. In one illuminating passage, Beatty says the following:

“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.”

What Beatty is arguing for is not merely the death of the individual, but also the death of any kind of excellence. It mirrors Nietzsche’s nightmare that one day we would all be so resentful of one another, and so deprived of our drive to create meaning, that we would become crabs in buckets: so afraid of our own inadequacy that we drag others down to our level by force. He calls this “the last man”, and he thinks it represents the ultimate waste of human potential. Yet in Fahrenheit 451, this is not just a side-effect of Beatty’s actions, it is the official aim behind state policy.

This levelling is also a one-way street. A vicious cycle occurs. Once everyone believes the same set of ideas, and any opposing ideas are either banned or heavily discouraged, how can people discover any other way to live? Moreover, as psychologists like Solomon Asch, and later Thomas Morgan and Kevin Laland have pointed out; when we humans are uncertain of something, we are likely to bow to the social pressure to conform. This mirrors how the conformism of Fahrenheit 451 seemed to happen via a snowball effect. First people wanted the leveling, or weren’t opposed to it, then it occurred a little, and as a result the conformist instinct made it slightly more popular, which allowed the state to promote it more, and so on until they arrived at their final destination. At the time the novel takes place, children spend all their time being indoctrinated by televisual systems. A set of curated ideas fed to them by a technology that has a near-monopoly on information. The result is a civilisation of carbon copies living repetitive lives, unaware that there are even other ways to exist.

But how did the people of this world allow this to happen? Why did no one stop them? What did the Grangers and Fabers of the world do?

7. Compliance and Control

One of history’s eternal questions is how the majority of people allow awful things to happen. When Hannah Arendt recorded the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the war criminal responsible for millions of deaths during World War 2, she partly wanted to answer this. But she came to a seemingly surprising conclusion. In her opinion, Eichmann did not have a burning, emotional hatred of Jewish people, or the others he condemned to die. She rather saw him as a follower of others. Someone who could be filled with the ideas around him, and content to simply let awful things happen. She termed this, along with some other observations, the “banality of evil”. Her idea was that many people would allow unimaginable horrors to occur, so long as it is endorsed by those around them. This hypothesis remains controversial. Some claim it was confirmed by the Milgram hypothesis, others criticize how that experiment was initially conducted, and they in turn have been challenged with further Milgram-style experiments which supposedly make up for the shortcomings in the original. In Bradbury’s novel, he very much comes down on the pessimistic side of this debate. The people of Fahrenheit 451 were not, by and large, intimidated into their position. They allowed it to happen, and in some cases actively encouraged it.

Faber explains that the state was only ever able to ban books, and launch this total attack on the information landscape, because people lost interest in learning altogether. Government policy and public opinion worked in tandem. People preferred entertainment to information, so markets and the state rose to meet this demand. It was only later that the situation set in. As Faber himself puts it:

“I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them. And the government, seeing how advantageous it was…circled the situation with your fire-eaters.”

This marks another notable difference between Fahrenheit 451 and other dystopias. In 1984 The Party rose to power with false promises that were believed by the desperate citizens of Oceania. In Brave New World, most people have been genetically engineered to be compliant, and follow orders. But in Fahrenheit 451, the people and the eventual repressive government were aligned in their aims. They were not lied to, they just supported what the state was doing. And, perhaps more importantly, there was no real opposition. Faber himself states how he and many others let go of their principles for the sake of personal safety and security. He condemns himself and the others as cowards, who stood idly by as everything they valued was torn away. They may not have been outright collaborators, but they all found their personal excuses to do nothing about the unfolding situation. Perhaps if they had acted earlier they could have nipped the whole disaster in the bud, but by the time the universities and libraries closed, and the threat came to their door, it was far too late to do anything about it. All their potential allies had already been defeated, and they had no choice but to capitulate. Some were forced to go on the run, others assimilated into this new world, but they could not save the knowledge and wisdom they held so dear.

Rene Girard was once asked what someone ought to do with his theories about how we persecute scapegoats to alleviate our own conscience, and bolster our societies. He replied that we must recognise when we are doing the persecuting. And I think Brabury’s stories suggest a similar line of thinking here. It is so easy to look down on those who blindly go along with the status quo in Fahrenheit 451, or the people who could have resisted, but did not out of either cowardice or a blind hope that it would never become their problem. But can we honestly look in the mirror and say that there are not many, many times when we do the same with our principles? In The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis argues that the first step towards evil is convincing ourselves that matters of morality, or ideals, or principle are completely divorced from the “real world” around us. They are alright to think about, but not fit propositions to act upon. For Lewis, as soon as this happens, we take our first steps towards our values becoming more theory than reality. We mouth the words of kindness, or compassion, or generosity, or learning, all while remaining bitter, cruel, selfish, and incurious.

In his initial conversations with Montag, Faber outlines three necessary conditions for his idea of a new world. The first is access to quality information. The second is the time to engage with it. And the third is the freedom to act from what you have learnt. He points out that books were allowed to be banned because people no longer WANTED quality information, but he could have easily looked to his third condition to explain the situation. It is not just that people were no longer interested in quality information, but that those who were clearly did not act based on that information. The right to act on your own conscience is meaningless if we seldom do. It becomes like the freedom to have telekinetic powers. Since no one has them anyway, to have such a right would be completely moot.

Dystopian novels tend to be full of warnings. Part of Orwell’s legacy is a vigilance around the potential of certain freedoms, especially freedom of expression, to be taken away. But Bradbury’s warning is subtly different. It is not simply that he wants us to be wary of the arguments given for censorship. It goes far deeper than that. There is the more fundamental question of whether we are living by our own values, or whether we too are just like Faber was before the state became so repressive, having principles in theory, but never in practice. Even worse, have we become like the beleaguered populace: so overwhelmed with information that we tire of it, relaxing into a warm bath of empty entertainment instead.

The English philosopher John Stuart Mill thought that it was the duty of every citizen in a state to keep an eye on their government. This was the lifeblood of a democratic system, and the means by which we prevent a devolution into tyranny. That was his answer to “who watches the watchmen”. We do. But are we keeping up our end of the bargain? Bradbury fears we are not.

But lastly, I want to move from the political back down to the personal. Because there is one final victim in Fahrenheit 451, and it is not books or even ideas, but the activity of deep thought and reflection.

8. The Value of Contemplation

If there was an activity ancient Greek philosophers were keen on, it was reflection. Plato thought that we could use our reflective and reasoning capabilities to learn fundamental truths about morality, beauty, and more. Aristotle thought that a life of contemplation was one of the highest goals anyone could aspire to. He thought that without at least some exercise of our rational faculties, we would not be utilising our uniquely human gift of detailed, reflective, complex thought.

There are many instrumental reasons we might value contemplation. In his essay In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell argues that just as we should be wary of thought without action, an awful lot of damage is done by action without thought. As he puts it:

“A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than in action is a safeguard against un- wisdom and excessive love of power, a means of pn serving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries”

This echoes an argument we find in a whole host of philosophical traditions. When the stoic philosopher Epictetus was a slave to a brutal master, his mind was all he had to take refuge in. Likewise, when Boethius was condemned to death, terrified of his fate and deprived of his freedom, he turned to contemplation to steady his mind, calm his nerves, and make sense of his abysmal situation. We have already talked about how the people of Fahrenheit 451 are deprived of access to good ideas, but so far we have only looked at how this affects their capacity for critical thought. It is true that they are deprived of the skills to criticise the state or to learn new concepts. But they also lose this safe haven in times of trouble. For the citizens in Fahrenheit 451, it is not just that they have lost ownership of their books, or their ideas, they have lost control of their very minds. If we agree with these philosophers that contemplation is an essential skill for weathering hardship, and bearing our situation when things go wrong, then this is a crime far greater than any other the likes of Beatty commit.

But it is not just that the exercise of thought can make us more resilient. It can also increase our joy. The Czech psychologist Mihaly Chiksentmihalyi observed that humans are at their most happy when we are taken up with a task that requires our entire attention, seems meaningful to us, and challenges us at just the right level. For him, this was not just pleasurable in the short term, but was a sustainable way of finding long-term joy in life. And the facilitation of this joy partly came from reflecting upon and knowing about the object of your focus. He uses the example of listening to a symphony. What can be quite a dull experience with no background in music suddenly becomes incredibly joyous if you can give it your full attention, and identify the themes, the use of harmony, of counterpoint, the way the different sections play off one another like a machine that turns human effort into beauty. This mirrors Russell’s own reflections, where he describes how knowing about the history of the apricot somehow makes the taste seem sweeter. The richness of the associations actually changes his experience of the apricot, and this all takes prior mental exertion, learning, and reflection.

And this is to say nothing of the joys of reflection itself. In his works The Burnout Society, The Transparency Society, and Infocracy, Byung-Chul Han worries about how our own attitude towards work and information means we rarely stop, process our experiences, and reflect. For Han, this is a shame for all the reasons we have already spoken about, but also because he views reflection itself as potentially one of life’s greatest pleasures. It is how we turn mere information into wisdom that is applicable to us, and it allows us to enjoy the time spent in our heads. If Blaise Pascal thought that our problems were caused by our inability to sit alone, in a room, quietly, Han thinks that if we commit to it, this time deep in thought will become not only useful, but intrinsically pleasurable.

Perhaps more importantly, with reflection and thought comes freedom. Not freedom in the sense of no one putting a gun to our head, but the freedom to make informed decisions that make sense to us. If I cannot stop, think, and consider, then I may make choices, but these will be either following what everyone else is doing, or simply grasping in the dark in the vain hope that I will achieve my aims. It turns life into an incomprehensible mess. This is yet another nail in the supposed “happiness” of the people in Fahrenheit 451.

In that world, the consideration of the human mind is so degraded that a reflective disposition is seen as a kind of illness. Clarisse mentions that she has been placed into therapy. But this is not because she is profoundly unhappy, or because she has become violent and erratic, but simply that she displays an unacceptable degree of thoughtfulness. The anti-intellectualism of Fahrenheit 451 has reached such a fever-pitch that thought itself is seen as a mental disease, while mass violence and self-destruction is simply the order of the day. It is telling that when Montag becomes disillusioned with his work, and starts to question Beatty’s ideology, he calls in “sick”. He may not even be lying. This could be the only way he knows to describe his condition. To be at odds with the status quo, to have engaged in genuine independent reflection, this is illness in the ethical system of Fahrenheit 451. And since it is an illness, that means that no one else has to take that position seriously. It is a way of discrediting the Clarisses and Montags of the world without ever having to confront them. By definition, anyone engaged in deep thought is not expressing a point of view, they are exhibiting a symptom. People will view the first bubblings of contemplation like we would the first signs of a horrible disease, and will rush to get it expunged from them as soon as possible. Little do they know they are cleaving off parts of their own mind in the process.

This is the ultimate evil in Fahrenheit 451. Were it not for this, you could almost believe their lies that their policy prevents conflict, maintains peace, and makes people happy. We could explain away the existential malaise of Montag, Mildred, and her friends as only emerging when they are confronted with an alternative viewpoint. Beatty might say it is not that they are not thinking enough, but they are still thinking too much.

But from what we know about the effect of reflection and thought. How it can help us to withstand harm, to multiply our joys, and achieve freedom, this position is no longer tenable. Even if we take the authorities at their word, and ignore the violence, the despair, and the repression, we would still be left with millions of people purposefully deprived of one of the fundamental pillars of a human life. Without the ability to direct their own minds, to think, and to reflect, these people may have been saved from acute pain, but they are damned to a dull Hell. Worst of all, they have had something that is fundamentally and unalienably theirs stolen from them, their own minds.

The subtlety of Bradbury’s dystopia is that even if Beatty was correct in all of his claims. If we look more closely, we still see it would hardly be worth it.

And I will leave you with one final quote from Bradbury's afterword to the 50th anniversary edition of his book.

“You don’t have to burn books, do you, if the world starts to fill-up with non-readers, non-learners, non-knowers? … Who, after a while, will know or care?”

Thank you so much for watching (reading), and have a wonderful day.