"If you happen to have clicked 300 Likes on your Facebook account, the Facebook algorithm can predict your opinions and desires better than your husband or wife!"

On Ray Bradbury

& his Alternate Realities

#onhisbirthdaytoday

A dystopia is a vision of society, often a future society, that is the opposite of paradise, or utopia. It is a vision of society gone horribly wrong.

As eminent critic Scupin Richard rightly points out,

A Dystopianite offers a candid commentary on contemporary society through a negative portrayal of an alternative society, on ‘alternate reality’ mode, thereby providing a realistic critique of totalitarian regimes, their hegemonic ideologies and their offspring - surveillance societies!

Surveillance societies!!!

Yes! Surveillance societies that are controlled by the electronic eye, ably assisted by the ‘thought police’!

In this regard, Yuval - the world-renowned historian, in his 2015 book titled, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, offers some really shocking facts to his readers. 

Says he –

A recent study commissioned by Google’s nemesis – Facebook – has indicated that already today the Facebook algorithm is a better judge of human personalities and dispositions even than people’s friends, parents and spouses.

The study was conducted on 86,220 volunteers who have a Facebook account and who completed a hundred-item personality questionnaire.

The Facebook algorithm predicted the volunteers’ answers based on monitoring their Facebook Likes – which webpages, images and clips they tagged with the Like button.

The more Likes, the more accurate the predictions.

The algorithm’s predictions were compared with those of work colleagues, friends, family members and spouses.

Amazingly, the algorithm needed a set of only ten Likes in order to outperform the predictions of work colleagues.

It needed seventy Likes to outperform friends, 150 Likes to outperform family members and 300 Likes to outperform spouses.

In other words, if you happen to have clicked 300 Likes on your Facebook account, the Facebook algorithm can predict your opinions and desires better than your husband or wife!

One reason why George Orwell’s dystopian novel titled, Nineteen Eighty-Four, written way back in 1949 holds relevance even today, especially for its axiomatic line, ‘Big Brother is watching you’.

On quite a similar vein, Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian novel titled, Fahrenheit 451 offers a horrendous account of an alternate reality in which books are forbidden!

In this dystopian world of a future America infested with thought control, carrying, possessing or reading books has been declared an offence!

Hence, squadrons of firemen have been employed to do away with them, by burning them, if and when they are found in the possession of anyone, anywhere, anytime!

Moreover, anyone caught with a book also suffered the ignominy of being immediately arrested and put on trial!

Written way way back in 1953, the book is a brilliant yet shocking critique of a dystopian world in which ‘independent thinking’ and ‘enlightened questioning’ are considered taboo and anathema to society’s ‘interests’!

Also, because books and the ideas contained within them enable a person to exercise independent, sane and rational judgments, they were conveniently considered ‘detrimental’ to the interests of the State and its agenda!

But to Bradbury, books are the most sacred of objects, as they are transmitters of stories!

Hence, by burning books, the ruling dispensation in this dystopian American society, has curtailed the freedom of expression and thereby stifled the human spirit itself!

One such fireman named Guy Montag who is also given the task of confiscating books by the dozens, and burn them down, finds out to his surprise that, storytelling has the wonderful power of binding people into a community of their own!

So he discreetly sets out on a secretive mission of collecting and preserving books, despite knowing full well that books are outlawed in his society, and that his profession especially, forbade him to do so!

One particular tableau of a scene from this dystopian read would real suffice to tell us about the inherent dangers of censorship, and thought control, where people caught having or reading books are immediately imprisoned, no questions asked!

Guy Montag while journeying in the subway one particular afternoon, finds it really difficult to remember the episode of Sermon on the Mount, as books were forbidden in the land.

The train car is lit up all over with a foot-tapping advertisement for a particular brand of a toothpaste!

Guy Montag finds out, to his shock that the passengers on board are busy singing along to the tune of the commercial and tapping away happily to the rhythms of its beat!

Montag loses his cool and shouts at them, asking them to “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” much to the shock and surprise of all of them journeying in the crowded train car.

Some in the crowd even feel that he has gone insane when he shouts at them!

Such is the manner, such is the way in which an ‘enlightened individual’ is stifled in a ‘herd-mentality’ society,

Bradbury quips!

Now Guy Montag realizes full well his onerous duty! Having become quite disenchanted with his work of burning books and destroying knowledge, he finally decides to put down his papers!

So he resigns his job and commit himself full-time to guarding and preserving the precious knowledge that is splashed across the delightful pages of the hallowed books, thus doing his noble part towards the safeguarding of the literature, the culture, and the community bonding of his society!

Well, in this regard, it would be so apt to do an interesting connect with Emerson’s much popular text titled, “American Scholar” which was originally an address delivered at Harvard University.

“The American Scholar” moots the idea of “Man Thinking.”

Emerson prioritizes the idea of “Man Thinking” because he quite feels that, today’s ideas and ideals of an education have moved far away from this ennobling idea!

Students just do their ablest might and mettle at rote learning, learning ‘by-heart,’ lesson summaries, formulas and concepts, without applying their mind and thought to what they really do!

Assumes all the more importance as Emerson was addressing a University gathering, at Harvard!

To Emerson, all human beings have the innate power within them to achieve the highest state of intellect because Nature and the world’s writings are available to all.

To Emerson, then, one’s vital education comes from three main Sources: Nature, Books, and Action.

The scholar’s education, then, according to Emerson, consists of three majorly influences –

1. Nature as the most important influence on the mind

2. The Past manifest in Books

3. Action and its relation to experience

Once a scholar is thus educated, Emerson strongly feels that, this enlightened scholar has the noble duty of sustaining his education, and making his education move forward, by disseminating it for the larger interests of his/her community.

Proper education, thus acquired through the three cardinal sources of Nature, Books, and Action - must flow from each person like an electrical charge, sending currents to every individual!

So much for the power of books in ennobling our minds, enlightening our hearts and enchanting our souls!

This, in a nutshell, is the exact super-power and sway of books over us all! Now if you could please re-read the message from this passionate, vibrant reading soul, you would understand the intense joy there is to reading!

And yesss! Why wait? Join a host of such passionate, vibrant reading souls, in kindling the ‘thinking being’ within you!

Carpe diem! Pull up a lovely book rightaway! Start reading through it! Become a ‘Human Thinking’ straightaway!

[All sources are from our past blogposts on Ray Bradbury]