We have met the enemy...*
Although Fahrenheit 451 takes place in the distant future, Captain Betty’s definition of happiness seems to clearly apply to modern American society. According to Beatty, happiness is a product of being kept busy and entertained while at the same time not being encouraged (or even given the opportunity) to think. “Speed up the film, Montag…Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of the publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought.” Captain Beatty would likely enjoy living in America today because we are well on our way to becoming a world like the one in Fahrenheit 451.
Ignorance is bliss, so the old saying goes. No news is good news. Beatty argues that when people are required to think about things, solve problems, worry about finances, and consider the world around them, they become unhappy. I don’t need to look any farther than my ninth grade English classes to see how common this is in our world, too. Dennis saunters in without books, without paper, without a pencil. He slaps a classmate in the head, giggles hysterically, taunts the boy until he stands up, then runs around the room like a third grader until the bell rings and I have to ask him to sit down. Once scolded, Dennis just folds into himself. There is never a notebook or a text in front of him, and on the rare day when he does bring a pen, he only uses it to draw on the desk. Dennis is an example of someone who doesn’t want the responsibility of knowing the answer or completing the task, and he doesn’t worry about the consequences of his actions because he just never thinks about what he’s doing. When I ask him how he plans to complete his work without a pencil, he replies, “I don’t know.” When I tell him that he won’t get finished by just sitting there staring out the window, he says, “I don’t care.” When I call on him to answer a question, he says, “I don’t get it.” Of course every class has a Dennis in it, but there are more of them every year. We are becoming a society in which it’s okay to be thoughtless and unaware; in fact, we admire ignorance.
Beavis and Butthead were quite possibly the most willfully stupid and annoying animated characters in the history of cartoons, but America loved them. Their show on MTV had a viewing audience larger than any news show. They went on to make a hit movie. America paid to worship ignorance, and students in all my classes were imitating that asinine heh-heh…heh-heh-heh laugh for two years. Beavis and Butthead were characters that spent their whole lives in front of the TV, except when they were out destroying property. I’m all for good satire, but it scared me when I realized that more than half of my students not only watched Beavis and Butthead, but also wanted to be like them! To much of America, it is desirable to know nothing and spend life in search of instant fun.
And, to paraphrase Captain Beatty, our culture certainly provides plenty of that. I consider myself a fairly tech-savvy fellow, but when I was standing in the school hallway the other day and saw two students, sharing a set of earbuds and laughing about the short video they were watching on a handheld device, I felt behind the times. To me, it doesn't seem that entertaining to try to cram in a song or a video between classes; in fact, to me it seems like an inconvenience. If you want to watch a funny show, do it...at home in the comfort of your armchair...on a screen big enough to see what's going on. What was the biggest outcry from students this year? When the new principal announced that personal stereos and headphones would no longer be allowed in the hallways during school hours. His argument was that such toys are non-instructional and serve no educational purpose; therefore they have no place in schools. But the students were outraged. Why? Because he was taking away their fun. Speaking of which, the most common phrase I have heard from students lately as they walk into class is something like this: "Are we going to do anything fun today?" Of course their implication is that learning is not fun, so we need to break up the monotony with a party, some doughnuts, a movie, some music...something...anything...as long as it's fun!
Sadly, it also seems that the society has bought into the ignorance-is-bliss argument as well. Not only is learning in schools not fun, neither is it fun to simply know what is going on in the world. A smaller percentage of Americans are watching nightly newscasts now than at any point since the nightly news became a staple of American television. Why? Too much bad news. It's no fun to hear about how many of our soldiers died in the war. Ironically, to keep their audience, newscasts (and newspapers, which have the added disadvantage of requiring people to read them) have tried to become quicker, more sensational, more disatrous: play up the horror and death. (On TV it isn't real anyway, right?) Make the news seem as much as possible like one of those action movies that is so popular. Then maybe people will tolerate the news again. Here's a recent statistic that seems to prove we are becoming a society like the one in Fahrenheit 451: More people know the name of the youngest child on The Simpsons than know how many freedoms are guaranteed by the first article of the Contstitution of the United States of America. Given this, it would seem that Americans are clearly more concerned about being entertained than they are about being free! I wonder how much fun it will be when the consequences of this constant quest for entertainment and fun (at the expense of genuine knowledge and thought) will catch up with us. Or could it be that it already has and we're just too empty-headed to know it?
"Speed up the film, Montag! Quick!" says Beatty in his description of the impatience of the society in Fahrenheit 451. We too are an impatient society, and my lifetime has spanned the development of technologies that make us even more so. I will address these more fully in a later blog, but I don't think it is hard to see that we want it first! We want it now! Think of all the modern conveniences that exist for no other reason than to appease (and encourage) our impatience: the TV remote controller; audio and video recording devices of all kinds (in the olden days of my youth, a cassette recorder; now, computers and personal headphone stereos that play digital music files); DVDs that allow us to watch movies on demand; digital television that allows us to "record" shows and watch them at our convenience and skip the commercials; cell phones that allow us to be continually "in touch" with each other; the Internet, which allows us to download our favorite songs anytime, IM our friends, complete our research paper without going to the library, buy our movie tickets or rent our movies, do our Christmas shopping, e-mail our loved ones in different parts of the world; and if that isn't enough, we can now carry the Internet with us on laptop computers or "blackberries"--no wires or plugs. Are all these things bad? Of course not, but they have created a society that is accustomed to getting what it wants when it wants, without regard for whether or not speed and convenience are always good things. Because people are so accustomed to this culture of convenience, they find things that require some time and consideration are frustrating -- things like reading books. It's like Beatty said in the novel: There was no censorship to begin with; people quit reading willingly. They didn't want to invest the time and thought. As an English teacher, I am in the unique position to see how true this is of most people today. (I know, most of you reading this, being honors students, will argue that isn't the case; but, trust me, most people today aren't as willing to tolerate thinking as you are...and sometimes I even wonder about you. Remember I said that next term when you are reading and complaining about A Tale of Two Cities.)
Although there are some elements of Fahrenheit 451 that have not yet come to pass, I suspect that the book will become less of a science fiction novel with each passing generation. Bradbury accurately described not only many new technologies years ahead of their time, but he also accurately predicted their effect on the culture. I suspect Captain Beatty would feel right at home here, and that scares the *%!! out of me.
*The title of this blog is the beginning of a quotation that used to be fairly well known. Does anyone know the rest of it or where it came from? Can you see why I would use it as a title for an essay like this? (Don't think too hard about it. I wouldn't want to interrupt your fun more than I already have. If you can't answer these questions quickly and with very little effort, well, then the answers must not be worth knowing, right?)
Ignorance is bliss, so the old saying goes. No news is good news. Beatty argues that when people are required to think about things, solve problems, worry about finances, and consider the world around them, they become unhappy. I don’t need to look any farther than my ninth grade English classes to see how common this is in our world, too. Dennis saunters in without books, without paper, without a pencil. He slaps a classmate in the head, giggles hysterically, taunts the boy until he stands up, then runs around the room like a third grader until the bell rings and I have to ask him to sit down. Once scolded, Dennis just folds into himself. There is never a notebook or a text in front of him, and on the rare day when he does bring a pen, he only uses it to draw on the desk. Dennis is an example of someone who doesn’t want the responsibility of knowing the answer or completing the task, and he doesn’t worry about the consequences of his actions because he just never thinks about what he’s doing. When I ask him how he plans to complete his work without a pencil, he replies, “I don’t know.” When I tell him that he won’t get finished by just sitting there staring out the window, he says, “I don’t care.” When I call on him to answer a question, he says, “I don’t get it.” Of course every class has a Dennis in it, but there are more of them every year. We are becoming a society in which it’s okay to be thoughtless and unaware; in fact, we admire ignorance.
Beavis and Butthead were quite possibly the most willfully stupid and annoying animated characters in the history of cartoons, but America loved them. Their show on MTV had a viewing audience larger than any news show. They went on to make a hit movie. America paid to worship ignorance, and students in all my classes were imitating that asinine heh-heh…heh-heh-heh laugh for two years. Beavis and Butthead were characters that spent their whole lives in front of the TV, except when they were out destroying property. I’m all for good satire, but it scared me when I realized that more than half of my students not only watched Beavis and Butthead, but also wanted to be like them! To much of America, it is desirable to know nothing and spend life in search of instant fun.
And, to paraphrase Captain Beatty, our culture certainly provides plenty of that. I consider myself a fairly tech-savvy fellow, but when I was standing in the school hallway the other day and saw two students, sharing a set of earbuds and laughing about the short video they were watching on a handheld device, I felt behind the times. To me, it doesn't seem that entertaining to try to cram in a song or a video between classes; in fact, to me it seems like an inconvenience. If you want to watch a funny show, do it...at home in the comfort of your armchair...on a screen big enough to see what's going on. What was the biggest outcry from students this year? When the new principal announced that personal stereos and headphones would no longer be allowed in the hallways during school hours. His argument was that such toys are non-instructional and serve no educational purpose; therefore they have no place in schools. But the students were outraged. Why? Because he was taking away their fun. Speaking of which, the most common phrase I have heard from students lately as they walk into class is something like this: "Are we going to do anything fun today?" Of course their implication is that learning is not fun, so we need to break up the monotony with a party, some doughnuts, a movie, some music...something...anything...as long as it's fun!
Sadly, it also seems that the society has bought into the ignorance-is-bliss argument as well. Not only is learning in schools not fun, neither is it fun to simply know what is going on in the world. A smaller percentage of Americans are watching nightly newscasts now than at any point since the nightly news became a staple of American television. Why? Too much bad news. It's no fun to hear about how many of our soldiers died in the war. Ironically, to keep their audience, newscasts (and newspapers, which have the added disadvantage of requiring people to read them) have tried to become quicker, more sensational, more disatrous: play up the horror and death. (On TV it isn't real anyway, right?) Make the news seem as much as possible like one of those action movies that is so popular. Then maybe people will tolerate the news again. Here's a recent statistic that seems to prove we are becoming a society like the one in Fahrenheit 451: More people know the name of the youngest child on The Simpsons than know how many freedoms are guaranteed by the first article of the Contstitution of the United States of America. Given this, it would seem that Americans are clearly more concerned about being entertained than they are about being free! I wonder how much fun it will be when the consequences of this constant quest for entertainment and fun (at the expense of genuine knowledge and thought) will catch up with us. Or could it be that it already has and we're just too empty-headed to know it?
"Speed up the film, Montag! Quick!" says Beatty in his description of the impatience of the society in Fahrenheit 451. We too are an impatient society, and my lifetime has spanned the development of technologies that make us even more so. I will address these more fully in a later blog, but I don't think it is hard to see that we want it first! We want it now! Think of all the modern conveniences that exist for no other reason than to appease (and encourage) our impatience: the TV remote controller; audio and video recording devices of all kinds (in the olden days of my youth, a cassette recorder; now, computers and personal headphone stereos that play digital music files); DVDs that allow us to watch movies on demand; digital television that allows us to "record" shows and watch them at our convenience and skip the commercials; cell phones that allow us to be continually "in touch" with each other; the Internet, which allows us to download our favorite songs anytime, IM our friends, complete our research paper without going to the library, buy our movie tickets or rent our movies, do our Christmas shopping, e-mail our loved ones in different parts of the world; and if that isn't enough, we can now carry the Internet with us on laptop computers or "blackberries"--no wires or plugs. Are all these things bad? Of course not, but they have created a society that is accustomed to getting what it wants when it wants, without regard for whether or not speed and convenience are always good things. Because people are so accustomed to this culture of convenience, they find things that require some time and consideration are frustrating -- things like reading books. It's like Beatty said in the novel: There was no censorship to begin with; people quit reading willingly. They didn't want to invest the time and thought. As an English teacher, I am in the unique position to see how true this is of most people today. (I know, most of you reading this, being honors students, will argue that isn't the case; but, trust me, most people today aren't as willing to tolerate thinking as you are...and sometimes I even wonder about you. Remember I said that next term when you are reading and complaining about A Tale of Two Cities.)
Although there are some elements of Fahrenheit 451 that have not yet come to pass, I suspect that the book will become less of a science fiction novel with each passing generation. Bradbury accurately described not only many new technologies years ahead of their time, but he also accurately predicted their effect on the culture. I suspect Captain Beatty would feel right at home here, and that scares the *%!! out of me.
*The title of this blog is the beginning of a quotation that used to be fairly well known. Does anyone know the rest of it or where it came from? Can you see why I would use it as a title for an essay like this? (Don't think too hard about it. I wouldn't want to interrupt your fun more than I already have. If you can't answer these questions quickly and with very little effort, well, then the answers must not be worth knowing, right?)
posted by MRT at 2:55 PM
2 Comments:
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Your blog made me sad. It made me scared for our soicety. It made me scared for what my kids generation is going to be like. I didn't know what the freedoms were, but I knew that the last Simpson child was named Maggie. I found out the the five freedoms declared in the first amendment are: Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly, and Petition. I think that is right. I googled it. Are you that disappointed with the Honors class this year?
Trey (and "Bertha" and anyone else who makes it this far into the comment section): In the face of times that often seem unfair and hopeless to those who think about it long enough, we have to remember that while we may not be able to change the whole world, we can change our small corner of it. And not everything has to be a huge crusade or a great revolution. The most meaningful changes we make are those that happen within ourselves. To quote Faber, again from my favorite book: "Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore." Ponder that...and then figure out how it applies to you. Thanks for the insightful comments, which are evidence that what I am doing might matter.
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