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Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content

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IainB:
...He wrote what he wrote, and meant what he meant...
-wraith808 (June 26, 2012, 01:06 PM)
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Hear, hear.
This is a digression, but an interesting one (for me).
SpoilerSome historians engage in historicism (a sort of search for laws of historical evolution that are taken to explain or even predict historical phenomena) that can sometimes end up in reconstructing and re-construing the meaning and perception of the history itself - as if you could! ("It was what it was.")
This is sometimes used by Totalitarian regimes to deny responsibility for something - a historical act - that was usually a horror and morally reprehensible and as such is politically incorrect and which must therefore be denied under the prevailing regime's ideology or official position. For example, the Turkish objection to the US declaring the Turkish oppression and massacre in Armenia as being "genocide". The same applies for the Japanese "Rape of Nanking", or the Japanese "Comfort Women".
The rule for such atrocities is thus:
You must not name a horrific crime against humanity for what it was.
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This sort of wish to rewrite history is a deliberate bending of historical knowledge to fit a current paradigm - you could call it a form of crime against knowledge per se - and it is generally reprehensible. But across the planet in schools, colleges and in our own minds, we seem to daily do a similar sort of thing to our knowledge of literature with nary a qualm, with the sort of phrase. "I think that what the author really meant when he wrote this was [insert your opinion here]."
That is presumably what annoyed Ray Bradbury, per the quotes above.

We do this to fictional writing and factual writing. I have watched an academic read Deming's 14-point philosophy and then declare of points 10 and 11, "I think that what Deming probably meant by these was [insert opinion here]."
However, the language for the 14 points is clear, simple, unequivocal and unambiguous, though difficult for many (myself included) to understand and accept because it runs contrary to our training and beliefs about management theory.
(Points 10 and 11 kill two sacred cows of Western management thinking - targets/quotas, and MBO.)
To educate and grow ourselves, we need "habits of mind" that enable us to make the intellectual effort to understand what has been written in its own context, rather than forcing it to fit our paradigms.

Renegade:
^ could it not be both (intentional content/message and other intrepertations)
-tomos (June 26, 2012, 03:29 PM)
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Exactly. He meant what he meant, but people got other things out of it that he didn't.

wraith808:
^ could it not be both (intentional content/message and other intrepertations)
-tomos (June 26, 2012, 03:29 PM)
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Exactly. He meant what he meant, but people got other things out of it that he didn't.
-Renegade (June 26, 2012, 08:36 PM)
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I'm not denying that.  What I'm saying is that people say that *he* meant the story to be about censorship, not that *I interpret the content of his writing to have themes of censorship* or something similar.  The two are *very* different- one being quite logical, and the other being quite abhorrent to me.

Renegade:
I'm not denying that.  What I'm saying is that people say that *he* meant the story to be about censorship, not that *I interpret the content of his writing to have themes of censorship* or something similar.  The two are *very* different- one being quite logical, and the other being quite abhorrent to me.
-wraith808 (June 26, 2012, 09:31 PM)
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Absolutely. It's quite insane for people to claim that someone else meant something that they cannot possibly know. Intentions simply aren't accessible unless stated explicitly. I can see how that would really piss Ray off! :)

40hz:
If indeed?  That was from an interview with the man himself, with direct quotes at times.  And, he had a point, truthfully.  And he did his part- he wasn't a Luddite.  He just had valid concerns that I think have materialized.  We live in a world obsessed with instant gratification at no cost in critical thinking or focus of purpose and thought.  Technology has undeniable benefits.  But with that benefit comes drawbacks and a deeper long term cost that I don't think is adequately addressed or readily apparent.

HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

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Bread and circuses.
-wraith808 (June 23, 2012, 09:18 PM)
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Definitely not a Luddite. Bradbury, like more than a few sci-fi authors on his generation, worried that a world similar to the one described in E.M. Foster's 1909 short story The Machine Stops was being brought into existence. Foster's story was one of Bradbury's favorites. Elements of it can be found in Fahrenheit 451 and most dystopian fiction of the 50s and 60s. (see: Logan's Run.) It was also "borrowed" wholesale by George Lucas (as is his wont) for the setting and most of the plot for his movie THX1138. At a little over 12k words, The Machine Stops is worth a read and available for download here.

excerpt hereFor a moment Vashti felt lonely.

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with radiance and studded with electric
buttons, revived her. There were buttons and switches everywhere--buttons to call for food for music, for
clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the
floor, filled to the brim with a warm deodorized liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There was the button
that produced literature, and there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends.
The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.

Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes
burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like?
Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make
an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date?--say this day month.

To most of these questions she replied with irritation--a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that
the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That
she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one--that four stars and three in the middle were like a man:
she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her
lecture on Australian music.

The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned; neither Vashti nor her audience
stirred from their rooms. Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well,
and saw her, fairly well. She opened with a humorous account of music in the pre Mongolian epoch, and went
on to describe the great outburst of song that followed the Chinese conquest. Remote and prim¾val as were
the methods of I-San-So and the Brisbane school, she yet felt (she said) that study of them might repay the
musicians of today: they had freshness; they had, above all, ideas. Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was
well received, and at its conclusion she and many of her audience listened to a lecture on the sea; there were
ideas to be got from the sea; the speaker had donned a respirator and visited it lately. Then she fed, talked to
many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.

The bed was not to her liking. It was too large, and she had a feeling for a small bed. Complaint was useless,
for beds were of the same dimension all over the world, and to have had an alternative size would have
involved vast alterations in the Machine. Vashti isolated herself--it was necessary, for neither day nor night
existed under the ground--and reviewed all that had happened since she had summoned the bed last. Ideas?
Scarcely any. Events--was Kuno's invitation an event?

By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter--one book. This was the Book of
the Machine. In it were instructions against every possible contingency. If she was hot or cold or dyspeptic or
at a loss for a word, she went to the book, and it told her which button to press. The Central Committee
published it. In accordance with a growing habit, it was richly bound.

Sitting up in the bed, she took it reverently in her hands. She glanced round the glowing room as if some one
might be watching her. Then, half ashamed, half joyful, she murmured "O Machine!" and raised the volume to
her lips. Thrice she kissed it, thrice inclined her head, thrice she felt the delirium of acquiescence. Her ritual
performed, she turned to page 1367, which gave the times of the departure of the air-ships from the island in
the southern hemisphere, under whose soil she lived, to the island in the northern hemisphere, whereunder
lived her son.

She thought, "I have not the time
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Not too far off from what we have right now. Foster even anticipated the emergence of platform fanbois. 8)

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