Fahrenheit 451 -- A True Dystopian

This is not the first time I've read Fahrenheit 451, but it has been, oh, about 30 years, and you can forget a lot in 30 years. I had. In fact, I had forgotten what a wonderful book it is and, actually, how relevant it remains, now, 60 years later. It's also amazing to see all of the foresight Bradbury had into the world that would be, which is now the world that is. [It was not amazing to see how much of Fahrenheit made it into Snow Crash and not in a good way. Not in an homage way. In a "I really like this and am going to take it and use it in my book" way. Like the mechanical dog. I didn't think it was possible for my view of Snow Crash to fall any farther than it already was, but Stephenson surprised me yet again. Not in a good way.]

The thing that stood out to me most is the true nature of the dystopian world of the Firemen. I'm not a fan of dystopians, but that's because I'm not a fan of current dystopians, which are not dystopians at all. Almost across the board, they are post-apocalyptic. The Hunger Games is not a dystopian story; I don't care how it's marketed or what publishers say or whatever. [And the distinction and where it went wrong is a post unto itself, so I'm not going to go into that now.] But Fahrenheit is in no way post-apocalyptic (although you could say it's pre-apocalyptic, I suppose). It's not even a government imposed dystopian. No, the Firemen and the book burning is something that came from the people, and that's what makes the book so scary.

And, possibly, real.

There are so many things in our current society that Bradbury was only glimpsing when he wrote the book, but they are so much worse, now, than then. I'll focus on two things:

1. We don't like to make people feel bad. About anything. This has been a growing trend over the past few decades with our movement toward positive thinking and making everything "politically correct," but it doesn't stop there, because we've started to stop allowing kids to experience losing. Losing feels bad. Over the past few years, there has been a growing trend in kids' sport teams (like my daughter's old softball team) to not have any losers. No scores. Just two teams of kids who are all winners. And many schools have begun adopting grade-less systems, because bad grades make kids feel bad.

In Fahrenheit, one of the reasons that people don't read is that reading makes them feel bad. As a society, the people want to have fun, and they can't get that through reading.

2. Thinking is hard work. And it makes people feel bad. If they read, they will think. If they think, they will realize just how not very special they are and how much they don't have and that makes them sad. Thinking about anything for too long becomes a bad thing; it's thinking they're really trying to get rid of, not the books. And I'm not talking about the government; I'm talking about the society. Books get shorter and shorter because no one wants to think (and we all know about the current TL;DR crap). Eventually, books become anathema to the society, so they start burning them. They burn them until it becomes a law.

I was looking over a survey recently dealing with people and whether they like to have "intellectual conversations" and 80-90% of people responding say no. I think the numbers where slightly higher for women, but that could be cultural (men want to appear smarter and women want to appear less smart than men). The most common response to the question was, "I don't like to think that hard."

That Bradbury was tackling these topics back in '53 (actually earlier, because Fahrenheit was based off of a short story he wrote in the 40s called "The Fireman") says a lot. It says that we've been struggling over the loss of books in our society for much longer than we normally think. It also says that, although these issues have grown in the decades, books, even if not physical, are still a strong force in our society, and that's a good thing. Of course, the metaphor that Bradbury is making is that the loss of books, the loss of knowledge, the loss of thought will lead man to his doom (a fiery apocalyptic doom in Fahrenheit), and I don't think that he was wrong. His warning is still as applicable today as it was then, just before the greatest wave of censorship the United States has ever seen would was across the country (something the Tea Party would like duplicate, I'm sure).

All of that aside, the language of Bradbury is superb, his language exquisite. Things like, "...under an ancient windmill that whirred like the sound of the passing years overhead." I can hear that sound in my head when I read it, and it gives the passage a weight that just isn't found in a lot of modern books. And my favorite passage:

She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darkness, but moving also toward a new sun.

It's full of foreshadowing and beauty. Very evocative. And the book is full of that stuff.

There's a reason this book is considered a classic, but many books that are no longer relevant are classics. This one surpasses those in that it is a classic and still relevant. I'm quite sure this is a book that more people should still be reading.

Deliberate vs...: A Post About Thinking (Part One)

Before I start, I just want to say that I'm not talking about anyone in particular in this post (and the next). In all actuality, I have no way of knowing what sort of thought processes any of you have. I'm speaking in generalities based on studies of people and how people tend to be. If you feel personally offended by anything I say here, I just want to point out that it's not me pointing that finger at you; it's you. I can't do anything about that.

This post is not about gun control or about guns at all other than that it is a response to a comment from my Freedom Line post, so I don't want any comments about guns or civil rights or anything else even if I mention that conversation, which I will. If you want to comment about guns, go read that other post and the comment thread there and make your comment on that thread. This is not a conversation about guns.

However, during that conversation, I was told that I was having a knee-jerk reaction to the recent child massacre and that if I would only apply reason to what I was saying I would see that I am wrong. If only I could approach the subject intellectually rather than emotionally, I would find a different answer to that question. The problem, then, is that my post was not based off of any kind of emotional reaction at all. Beside the fact that the views expressed in that post were not new to me, I waited weeks to make that post so that I would have time to get my thoughts in order (rather than the next day (or the same day) as many other bloggers did), just as it has taken me two weeks since that comment was made for me to get my thoughts in order to make this post. I just don't make rash comments.

Let me add here that this is something about me that often creates... issues... between my wife and me. She will ask me something and want a response right then, but I just don't have one for her. I have to think about almost everything before I respond to it. This goes for movies and books and, well, everything. On top of that, I can almost always separate my emotional response from my actual views about an individual topic (you can see my recent review of An Unexpected Journey for an example of that). Most people respond like this:
"I don't like this thing; therefore, it is bad," or
"I do like this thing; therefore it is good."
I talked about that stuff here and also in some other post that I'm not going to keep looking for right now. At any rate, those things are not necessarily the truth. 2/3 of my kids don't like broccoli, but I'm, like, 99.7% sure that broccoli is not just good but very good. Whether they like it or not.

Having said all of that, there are two basic ways that people "think" about things, two ways that people arrive at conclusions and decisions: one is what we would call decisive, but that is more because of an incorrect perception that decisive also means "quick," which it does not; and deliberate, which involves more time and actual thought before coming to a conclusion. In all actuality, what we call "decisive decision making" involves almost no thought at all. It's all emotion and "gut" instinct.

Guess which one is the most prevalent. And guess which one we, as a culture, hail as superior. Yeah, "decisiveness". Culturally, we are ALL over that shhhtuff, like a fly on it. How prevalent? Oh, probably something like 80% of people arrive at what they believe about a subject based on this model of "thinking." Or maybe I should say non-thinking. 80% (It might be as low as 70%, but many studies indicate a number higher than 80%, possibly as high as 90%)! That means that most people just respond to things without ever bothering to actually think about the outcome.

So, yeah, most people that responded to the child massacre in Newtown by yelling "No more guns!" did so as an emotional response to the situation. However, most people that have responded to that by yelling "You can't have our guns!" have responded in the same way. Neither side has invested much thought into the issue. From that standpoint, both sides are wrong. [I am personally horrified (emotional response) that gun stores are now complaining that they can't keep supplied, right now, due to the rush of people to buy more guns and that the specific weapon used to murder those children is the item in the greatest demand. Not that I don't understand the compulsion, but you can't tell me those people are acting rationally.]

I should also add that virtually all of the decisions that lead to the housing bubble and the economic collapse of 2008 were made by these 80% of people [this is not my opinion; there have been many studies on the causes of the economic collapse and every single one of them points to bad, "positive" decisions]. In many cases, the people actually evaluating what was going on and saying things like "this is a bad idea" or "we need to slow down," the people waving the red flags back in '06 and '07, were fired outright. Well, let go. They were told they were no longer needed and to take their "negativity" elsewhere. Why? Because we love people that will quickly arrive at a decision and act on it right then at that very moment. Don't stop to think! Just do it! We call those people decisive and hold them up as the epitome of how to be. Don't show doubt. Don't evaluate. Just react.

The problem with that is that in almost every study done, these people are shown to be wrong something like 70-80% of the time. Because they don't bother to stop and engage their brains, they come to the wrong decision. Do the wrong thing. And they take everyone else with them. And, yet, we continue to hail these people as heroes and follow them blindly in almost all circumstances. It's like... it's like deciding that the person you're going to cheat off of in math class is the kid scoring 30% on his tests because he's failing in such a self-assured manner.

This phenomenon baffles me to no end, and I'm sure it's what leads to mobs. No one wants to listen to the guy saying, "Hey, this is a bad idea!" And no one, and I mean no one, wants to be that guy. It sucks to be that guy. I know, because I grew up being that guy. You end up being the guy standing alone while everyone else goes off to do something stupid. Sure, later, they come back and say, "Man, you were right. We shouldn't have done that." But it doesn't keep you from being alone.

Maybe it all has to do with patience; I don't know. Most people don't have any, and that leads to bad and wrong decisions. Maybe it's just that most people aren't that smart. That sounds bad, because, by definition, most people are of average intelligence. I'm not one of those people (which is not me being arrogant, it's me stating an objective truth based upon actual data (which I will not go into right now)). Unfortunately, it sometimes (sometimes more than sometimes) causes me to look down on people of average intelligence as being less intelligent than they actually are, if that makes any sense. I do try to control that, though, and I'm much better than I was when I was in high school.

At any rate, I'm not one for jumping to conclusions, because I just don't jump. I have to gather evidence and look at all sides of a situation, and, sometimes, I'm never ready to come down conclusively on an issue. This is usually because I don't feel that the evidence from any side is conclusive enough. In that respect, I'm not the best at giving a definitive answer about things, contrary to how it might be seen on here at times, because I want room to accept new information and modify what I think about a subject based on new information. This, also, is contrary to how most people are. Post-high school (and certainly post-college), most people (much greater than 80%) will completely dismiss new information about a subject they have previously arrived at a conclusion about. It makes me sad, because it's the thing that has caused the huge political and religious divide in our country. It's also why, generation after generation, you typically have the young pitted against the old, because the old just will not accept that there could be anything new to add to what they know.

All of that to say that if more people would just slow down and actually look at the evidence, both sides of the evidence, or, maybe, all sides of the evidence, we might not have such a huge gap in our world. I don't see that happening any time soon, though.
Next time, the three types of decision making processes.

Too Many Positives Equal a Negative

I was listening to the radio the other day in the car, because that's almost the only time I can just listen to music. However, as the kids and I headed home from grocery shopping, we hit that time on Sunday night where they have their little talk show. >eye roll here< (I'm not going into why I'm rolling my eyes, but let's just say that it's when they gather together a bunch of men that are basically out of touch with the real world and discuss issues that are meant to help us out. It's a mostly worthless program.) ANYWAY... The topic was stress and how to get rid of bad stress and only have good stress, whatever that is, because they sort of skipped over that other than to say there's good stress and there's bad stress. Whatever. To the body, stress is stress.

They're babbling along, and I was only half listening, because I didn't want to be listening at all, because I wanted there to be music, but I caught one of the guys saying that one of the best ways to deal with stress is to avoid negative people. Yes, yes, surround yourself with happy, bubbly people, and all of your stress will just melt away. And that's when I reached up and turned the radio off.

My son, as he is wont to do, immediately asked me why I did that, and I found myself needing to explain to him that that view, the view of cutting negative people out of your life, comes from an illegitimate arm of popular psychology called positive psychology which, by and large, is worthless and completely made up. This is not me saying this, although I agree with it, positive psychology has no basis in research. It is a series of hypotheses that adherents have made without any proof. I think it was the guy that founded the movement that said something like, "We are hoping that one day the research will prove our claims." Great.

Going with the theme of pointing back to old posts on Shadow Spinner release days, you should all go back and read this post talking about the excellent book Bright-sided by Barbara Ehrenreich. After you read my post, you should probably pick up that book. I think it will be quite an eye opener. On the other hand, if you're totally bought into all of this positive thinking crap, you should just ignore everything I just said.

But don't ignore this!

Today is the FREE! release of "Part Six: The Man with No Eyes." It will be FREE! all day Thursday, October 4 and Friday, October 5. Make sure you go pick it up as it is the first appearance of Michael in the pages of Shadow Spinner. If you want to know more about  him, you'll have to check out "The Evil That Men Do." It's only $0.99. Oh, as a special bonus, you can also get for FREE! "Part Five: The Police Car" today only. I'm pretty sure I said FREE!, so don't miss out!

And remember, because, well, honestly, I'm begging, especially if you've picked up previous installments and liked them, please click the "like" button when you download. You could always go back and click "like" on all of the other ones, too. It's not hard. Just a slight twitch of the finger on your mouse. A little more time consuming would be a short review and a rating. It doesn't even have to be a long review. I think Amazon requires something like 20 words, so, you know, you could write something like "This was the most awesomest story ever written, and everyone should read it!" and you'd be more than half way there. And there are even some words left over so you could personalize the review in some way. Seriously, every review helps.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Bright-sided (or How Positive Thinking Will Let You Down)

A few years ago (okay, more than a few), Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an excellent book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, about the near impossibility of making it as a single person trying to live off of a low wage position (like Wal-Mart). She did this by actually spending a year herself, a prize-winning novelist, trying to live solely off of what she could make from "entry level" positions. It's a fascinating book and one I would highly recommend. Intellectually knowing some of  the things she talks about in the book before reading it still did not prepare me for her recount of the reality of the situation. Even having gone through some of the experiences she did (I worked at Toys 'R' us in two different states), her book still opened my eyes to the reality she talks about.

I mention Nickel and Dimed, here, because I think it goes well with her latest book: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. But I'll get to that in a moment.

I have been fed up with the whole positive thinking thing for years and years. A large part of the reason my wife and I no longer attend church is because of the prosperity doctrine (the religious take on positive thinking) and its prevalence in  the modern church. It actually makes me sick. Entering the writing world, now, I'm experiencing the positive thinking movement from a whole new angle, and it's not making me any happier than previous brushes with it in other venues. From that perspective, I think this may be an important book for writers to read. Despite claims from popular psychology that if you just stay positive, you will get what you want, most research actually shows that having a realistic view point is healthier and more likely to get you where you want to go.

Let me just say, though, that, if you are someone that believes  in positive psychology, you will hate this book.

She starts with her own eye-opening experience with positive thinking. As a cancer patient. There is a notion in the cancer community, especially the breast cancer community, that the way to beat cancer to is "stay positive." If you stay positive, the cancer can not win. And, if it does, it was because the patient allowed in enough negative thoughts that the cancer was able to win. From there, she details the original rise of positive thinking back in the 1800s and how it has evolved to what it is today.

Now, I relate Bright-sided to Nickel and Dimed because of the recent (by recent, I mean the last 30 years) rise of positive thinking in the business world. Back in the 80s, when companies realized they could make money from down-sizing their employees, they needed something, anything, to keep the left over work force not just working for them but happy to be there working for them despite the fact that they no longer had any job security. The answer? Positive thinking. Large companies began bringing in positive thinking coaches to affirm the remaining employees that they were there because they were "worthy." The way to get ahead was to be a bigger fish and to work harder. The people that had been down-sized were down-sized because they just weren't good enough (of course, the actual truth of that is that most often the choices of who would stay and go were completely arbitrary, completely unrelated to performance).

All of this positive thinking in the work place resulted in the people at the top completely buying into it  themselves. Good things, and only good things, come to those who stay positive. Some of the business scenarios she talks about are truly, truly frightening. And all of this positive thinking lead directly to the economic collapse we are all currently wallowing in. The direct tie-in to Nickel and Dimed? In the 60s, the average difference in pay between the lowest paid employee and the highest paid employee in a company was a mere ratio of 1:24. Yes, I say mere, although, to me, that seems a bit staggering. That difference today? Greater than 1:300. I can't even comprehend that. But the people at the top not only don't see anything wrong with this, they think they deserve it. By the virtue of their positive thinking.

There's a section on the rise in the prosperity doctrine in the church, too. The idea that God is nothing more than a vending machine. You put in your positive thoughts and God gives you stuff you want. I could rant about this for a while. How none of this is Biblical. How it's all just more life coach non-sense to raise money. But, you know, you can read the book. Or watch it on TV. There are any number of prosperity preachers you can tune into.

The last section deals with the rise of popular psychology. Also a money making scheme. I have always, since I was a kid, held science as something close to sacred. Scientists were objective. They looked at the data. They didn't make emotional decisions about the data or try to skew the data to prove their point. They didn't hold those kinds of beliefs. Because science isn't about what we believe, it's about what is. Right? I wish I could still believe that. However, we continue to get news about how this scientist or that research team falsified data to support various claims. This goes back decades. As it turns out, positive psychology has no data to support any of its claims. Some data may suggest correlations, but there is no research that actually shows that any of what positive psychology says is true is, actually, true. Because I don't have the book in front of me (it's out on loan), I'll paraphrase what one positive psychologist said to Ehrenreich: "The research/science hasn't caught up to the claims (of positive psychology)." In true positive thinking form, though, they fully believe that some day their research will bear fruit and prove their claims.

Writing is a tough field, especially today when the publishing industry is slowly imploding and seems unwilling to do anything about it. I imagine the guys at the top are caught in the same positive thinking bubbles that the guys responsible for the economic implosion, especially the housing industry, were caught in. I think it's important that we, as the writers, not get caught in that same bubble. In a field where only 1 in 1000 make it (in the traditional sense), we need to be realistic, not cling to positivity. No, I'm not saying to give up. I am saying that the way to make it as a writer is determination and perseverance. Thinking happy thoughts will not get you published. Keeping at it will.