Re: Uncle Ray’s Dystopia

[Klaus Stock]

 Most of all, Mr. Bradbury knew how the future would feel: louder,
 faster, stupider, meaner, increasingly inane and violent. Collective 
 cultural amnesia, anhedonia, isolation. The hysterical censoriousness 
 of political correctness. Teenagers killing one another for kicks. 
 Grown-ups reading comic books. A postliterate populace. I remember 
 the newspapers dying like huge moths, says the fire captain in 
 Fahrenheit, written in 1953. No one wanted them back. No one 
 missed them. Civilization drowned out and obliterated by electronic 
 chatter. The book's protagonist, Guy Montag, secretly trying to 
 memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes on a train, finally leaps up 
 screaming, maddened by an incessant jingle for Denham's Dentifrice. 
 A man is arrested for walking on a residential street. Everyone 
 locked indoors at night, immersed in the social lives of imaginary 
 friends and families on TV, while the government bombs someone on the 
 other side of the planet. Does any of this sound familiar?
 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/opinion/uncle-rays-dystopia.html?_r=1src=unfeedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonppagewanted=all
   http://snipurl.com/23vj8zh

Unfortunately, yes.

Many  years  ago, I still believed that science fiction was a valuable
instrument for experimenting with future possibilities, in a way which
makes  the  experiments not only accessible to scientists, but also to
ordinary people like you and me. Yes, stories like Fahrenheit 451 or
1984 were often read in school, so a lot of people should know these
works.  Yes,  everyone detested the world which was described in these
stories.

And  yet,  nowadays very few people seem to care about the this things
happening in reality.

Apart from fiction, history is anonther source from which we can learn
about  possible  mistakes  in  political  and social development (even
history,  as  it is taught in schools, is sometimes adjusted in such
ways  that  it would be classified more as fiction than science). Does
this  mean  that  people  will just not care if the next Hitler should
appear?  He'd  just  need to say Oh, don't worry, I'm just suspending
freedom  and  democracy  in our fight against terrorism and everybody
will comfortably rest assured that everything will be fine.

Oh,  wait  freedom  and  democracy  have already been, erm, reduced in
order to fight terrorism. Large corproations already run the executive
and  the  judiciary  in  many  western  countries  (they still do need
politicians  to run the legislative for them). Not totally democratic,
but  all  in  the  name  of  the  fight against terrorism. Yup, anyone
remembering that the DMCA was passed as part of an anti-terror law?

Best regards, Klaus


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Uncle Ray’s Dystopia

[Ronn! Blankenship]

The character complains that he's relentlessly pestered with calls 
from friends and employers, salesmen and pollsters, people calling 
simply because they can. Mr. Bradbury's vision of tired commuters 
with their wrist radios, talking to their wives, saying, 'Now I'm at 
Forty-third, now I'm at Forty-fourth, here I am at Forty-ninth, now 
turning at Sixty-first has gone from science-fiction satire to dreary realism.


It was all so enchanting at first, muses our protagonist. They 
were almost toys, to be played with, but the people got too involved, 
went too far, and got wrapped up in a pattern of social behavior and 
couldn't get out, couldn't admit they were in, even.


Most of all, Mr. Bradbury knew how the future would feel: louder, 
faster, stupider, meaner, increasingly inane and violent. Collective 
cultural amnesia, anhedonia, isolation. The hysterical censoriousness 
of political correctness. Teenagers killing one another for kicks. 
Grown-ups reading comic books. A postliterate populace. I remember 
the newspapers dying like huge moths, says the fire captain in 
Fahrenheit, written in 1953. No one wanted them back. No one 
missed them. Civilization drowned out and obliterated by electronic 
chatter. The book's protagonist, Guy Montag, secretly trying to 
memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes on a train, finally leaps up 
screaming, maddened by an incessant jingle for Denham's Dentifrice. 
A man is arrested for walking on a residential street. Everyone 
locked indoors at night, immersed in the social lives of imaginary 
friends and families on TV, while the government bombs someone on the 
other side of the planet. Does any of this sound familiar?


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/08/opinion/uncle-rays-dystopia.html?_r=1src=unfeedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonppagewanted=all

 http://snipurl.com/23vj8zh


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