Fahrenheit 451: Process 3
After doing research about new technologies in the 1950′s, I saw that TV’s and radios were the primary innovations. That kinda makes sense to me as this book could have been written to warn people about the dangers of media and the potential outcome of overusing media. Yet, you cannot help but notice how similar this book is to our world today.
In this dystopia, people fiend for instant satisfaction, or anything that gives you dopamine, For example, every household has a “parlor”, where people can interact and talk to a fake family on the screen. People in the story actually take their “families” seriously too, considering when Montag turned off the TV in front of 4 brainwashed women, they all freaked out. And for the most part, women are the most brainwashed since their husbands are sent to war, and the government has implemented the say, “It’s always someone else’s husband that dies”, and they don’t care about it. The story doesn’t give too much detail on this, but I think some of their husbands are already dead and they just keep telling them “He’ll be back in a week”, forever prolonging the lies fed to the citizens.
Montag remembers a time when Clarisse told him how houses had porches, where people would just sit, enjoy the world, talk, or even just stay silent and think to themselves. The architects in the government, however, got rid of them because “they didn’t look good” with the actual underlying purpose of not wanted people to be their own anymore. But now, everyone is always yapping and constantly stimulated through nonsense in the seashell radios in their ear. Also, fake families on the TV’s are pretty similar to reality TV shows today.
Another thing you find in the book (which I fall victim of) is people driving fast as a coping mechanism whenever they’re stressed. Mildred always says “Take the beetle” and “get it up around 95 and you feel wonderful”. The government’s reason behind letting people do this is that when they’re on the verge of becoming woke, like Montag is, they drive so fast that the only thing you can think of is danger, relieving your mind of actual things you have to worry about. Ultimately, whatever these people do is to distract themselves from any problem whatsoever.
Now if you take a technology from a little kid today, they might throw a tantrum or freak out because they’re sorta addicted to it, like how people of this society are.
In a nutshell, Ray Bradbury has predicted the future with frightening accuracy, whether it was intentional or not. Reading this has actually caused me to rethink my technology habits. You have to think that at one time, this stuff would’ve sounded stupid because no one would expect that in the 1950′s, yet here we are, doing the stupid stuff.
