https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaLJ10v4xUA
It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
I find it an incredible act of charity that editors will often choose headlines that signal a particular article is too stupid to be read and can be safely ignored.
And if the author chose the headline, sometimes a complete lack of self-awareness accomplishes the same thing.
it’s found in the financial press, too.
And the 19,000 economists at the Fed and throughout finance and academia would better employ as predictors scapulimancy or the I Ching.
Art imitates life. There is a movie/farce called “Idiocracy.”
The idiots are bad enough. Worse is the clown show now running through the institutions.
I’ve seen it’s called ‘coulrocacy.’ You can see the ruinous results in the raging dumpster fires which are blue cities and states, and public education failing test scores.
It’s tragic and will not end well.
Fahrenheit 451 becomes more accurate every year.
This is something most people don’t realize because they have never read it beyond a synopsis, and so think that the book is about government censorship preventing people from accessing the sacred books that they are eager to read. (Of course, the whole phenomenon of people reading synopses instead of the book and thinking that they understand it fully is discussed at length in Fahrenheit 451 itself.)
There was a fashion among the wealthy in the 19th and early 20th centuries to stock large libraries with books they never read, to impress others. Could one be charitable and suggest that practice was alluded to?
Current headline and article summary: “Reading is precious – which is why I’ve been giving away my books
I’m donating my books to people who can most benefit from them. Why keep a novel that could delight someone else?”
… which sounds more anti-clutter than anti-book [similar to the Konmari (i.e., Marie Kondo) method for tidying-up books].
Nevertheless, the link still references the original headline:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/reading-is-precious-but-the-cult-of-book-ownership-can-be-smug-and-middle-class
… but with an explanation on the bottom of the article:
“The headline on this article was amended on 24 January 2023 to place greater emphasis on the column’s central argument”
For an argument against this method/philosophy (from 2019):
https://bookriot.com/konmari-method-for-books/
[…] American Catholic Pope to Transform Castel Gandolfo into an Eco-Centre – Catholic Conclave Going Full Fahrenheit 451 – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American […]