fahrenheit 451

Yesterday in class we discussed an article called “The Elusive Big Idea” by Neal Gabler. Gabler argued that we are currently in a time where facts are all that matters, not the ideas behind them. I believe this to be true, that a majority of Americans care more about the color of their shirt than what the meaning of life is. Thinking big ideas is too much work for the newer, lazier generation. This reminded me of “Fahrenheit 451.” I read this book for the first time last summer, and after finishing it all I could think was that Ray Bradbury predicted the future. I can see traits in my younger sister that resemble those of the characters in Bradbury’s novel. All they care about is getting the next thing that’s on the market. Books are banned because they are dangerous, they spark ideas. These ideas could make us aware of the faults in the system and that is unacceptable in the fictional governments’ eyes. Now, without governmental intervention, books are being neglected by many and instead replaced with new gadgets that allow for gaming and instant communication. And even there we are numbing ourselves to new technology because we expect the next new thing to be released in a year or so.

So how do we fix this phenomena? I’m not sure we can. Many people are too stubborn to have to use their brains and think. If only we had a system that taught children, early on, that reading opens up new worlds. Right now, at least in my sister’s eyes, reading has been stigmatized to mean nerd or anti-social. If we can get rid of this stigma, we’d have a better educated nation. We’d also have a nation that knows how to think of these big ideas.

White Privilege

After our discussion this past week on Peggy McIntosh’s article White Privilege, I discussed the topic with my professor Olon Dotson, who teaches the class Cultural and Social Issues in Architecture. After talking about this, he emailed me this youtube video, while an extensive video (about an hour) it is a very good argument about white privilege and social inequality. Tim Wise starts out his lecture by stating that he is on that stage because he is a white man and that if a person of color tried to present something like this on that stage they would probably have been denied that right.
So is there a solution to this? I believe that as long as ‘white’ people remain a majority in the United States, this problem is not going to go away. A good portion of Americans are too stubborn to learn about these issues, or else remain ignorant of the fact that they exist. So these ignorant or stubborn people will not try to do anything about an issue like this until they learn what it feels like to be a minority, to be stereotyped and oppressed.