Face Me And Scream

Written by: Michael Enger

I recently read a book called “Fahrenheit 451″ (written by Ray Bradbury. It’s awesome, you should probably check it out) wherein a “fireman”, whose job it is to burn books, struggles with the implications of living in a world where books are outlawed due to their thought-provoking nature and the dangers that presents to the placid, horribly monotonous, populace. Now, despite how easily influenced I am by outside ideas, it doesn’t take a book to convince me of the dangers of living in a society where intelligence is “weeded out” as society conforms to a more manageable state of being, but I get the idea that it’s already happening.

Bradbury states that he wrote the book due to his thoughts on the steady increase of interest in this brand new “television” thing that had recently been invented (it was the 1950s, mind you) and how this form of easy entertainment was quickly overtaking the written word as the people’s choice of hobby activity. He was right in his paranoia and now, only half a century later, people can lead entire lives without ever picking up a book but there are few “civilized” men or women that haven’t watched an hour of TV.

The decline of modern civilization is nothing new and I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of people who are saying that we’re killing the planet, killing ourselves and that we’re on a one-way ticked to hell (or some similarly negative imaginary place). I am, however, going to make the claim that the amount of time that the western world spends on celebrity gossip and other useless endeavors could, if allocated properly, have “civilized” the entire continent of Africa, something which would benefit the entire human race. Only a handful of individuals profit from the sustained poverty of half the planet and I bet that you’re not one of them.

It’s funny, ironic and horribly tragic that ignorance can’t be fought with education, because nobody wants to know, they don’t want to care enough, they don’t want to think about it. So quick-thrill forms of entertainment dominate the market of human interest and legendary classics are abridged for the sake of saving time and maximizing political correctness. The human mind stays under-stimulated and thusly oblivious to the horrid surroundings brought by the same pacifying ideology which is the cause of the ignorance. It’s a vicious cycle of violence and stupidity.

I think that “Mein Kampf” should stay the way it is (although always presented with a large dose of history), “Hamlet” cannot be appreciated unless ingested in its full form and the Bible should just stick to the old testament, where rape, murder and frivolous sodomy ran rampant amongst the pages. Nothing should be changed, not for convenience or to soften the impact of the horrible things that our past and culture has wrought. We are evil, tedious beings and no amount of censorship or shortening of our literary works can hide that.