Fahrenheit 451

Upon reading the novel, it dawned on me that Ray had felt that way in 1960. He'd seen it. And, I, in 2022, feel that way. It is the alienation of any genius---that is the ethos of the book.
Yet, the insidious thing about Fahrenheit 451 is that the dystopian doesn't actually censor books. It's far worse than that. It censors creativity. It censors openness. It censors genius of any kind.
That's the thing about it. I feel that way right now, but it is rather the social awkwardness of being what I am. If that were made illegal, and it were a crime to think, a crime to be open, a crime to be different, that's the insidious nature of Fahrenheit 451. Not just the burning of books---which is bad---but the outright denial of one's right to think, act, believe, experience. 

There are certain people with High IQs, and most scientists and scholars are among them, who having the elephant memory they do, cannot piece together information to create new ideas. There are such individuals with extremely high IQs which are incapable of creativity.
Then, there are people like me, who have a high IQ, but have extreme openness, extreme creativity, extreme existential intelligence. Who, would certainly be the figure Fahrenheit 451's society censored.

I feel that encroaching sense that it may be coming soon. But, I do not wish it, to. But, there are two kinds of geniuses. Mathematical, and Linguistic. Mathematical geniuses have the ability to do arithmetic. They have the ability to edit books meticulously, for no punctuation or grammatical errors. They remember like an elephant rote rules, formula, traditions,---and they are very intelligent people. Ask them anything about protocol or a certain duty they will be able to tell you down to the exact letter. That's probably why I didn't do well in Boy Scouts.
Yet, creative geniuses---being that we are so rare actually---have another ability. That ability to piece together thoughts, and weave them, and express them. To make new from raw materials. To rediscover ancient philosophies and traditions.

It may just be the difference between intelligence and wisdom. Yet, when I look at a fireman, I see Ray Bradbury's creature. I see Guy Montag. I saw in the woods a fireman, one who worked for a fire company, and the soulless determination, the thoughtless trample through the woods without even looking at the bluebells in full bloom to his left---rather, he was determined to accomplish some arcane goal.

Christ is very strange, as a godlike figure, in that He inverts the traditional values we assume when we think of conservatism. Unemployment, aimless wandering, long diatribes and discussions, parables,---Christ lived as a man of words, and He told us to live the same. Because, obviously, determination and desire to reach a goal thwarts the wisdom. Of rubbing dandelions on your cheek, of opening your mouth and catching the rain, of stopping to smell the flowers. These are utterly human things, and by seeking to accomplish a goal, by mindlessly driving ahead for the attainment of a reward or occupation, one does not appreciate the things they see. They, like Mildred, get ensconced in a play about nothing.

And the problem is so many people are like thus. So many people, instead of being creative, are not able to be creative. There are intelligent people who cannot be creative. There are intelligent people, conversely, who cannot do simple arithmetic. Like myself. Though maths were my better subject in school---I hated reading---it still didn't change the fact that I was better off as a philosopher than a mathematician. I never learned math past algebra, and I never got into Quadratic Formulas or exponents until College. Literally, I never saw a quadratic equation until my second year at college. Yet, I was proficient enough at the basic rudimentaries of math that I could get a 100% on my first Math Test without a calculator. My grades actually declined the more I required a calculator. But that doesn't stop the fact that I am inconsistent at math.

What use is there for a philosopher? Namely, that is the question Fahrenheit 451 asks. What use is there for contradictory wisdoms from numerous books? What reason does a man like me, falsely state that all summer leaves begin as flowers? Perhaps to take notice to it. As, most leaves look like flowers---if not outright are flowers---in their beginning stage, while unfolding from the bud. Yet, some haughty scholar, will do like they do with Aristotle some years down the line. "All trees do not flower."  One of their more tender students will chuckle at the insidious misrepresentation of my thoughts, and then think "You miss the essence of a flower." If you can look at the oak bud when it's first unfolding, and see it has a consistency much unlike any leaf I'd ever seen. Or, that the ant has four legs. Of course, we like to think of insects as having six legs---when, indeed, their first two legs are protracted to use as arms when the insect is stationary. How many other such observations have we  mistakenly discredited in the past? And what wisdom does the past have for the future?
Fahrenheit 451 is the outlawing of thought, the censoring of aberrations, the dictum that only the present knows best, the belief that all things must be literal. And with that, we lose our sense of who we are. And really, what Fahrenheit 451's society outlaws, is humanity itself.
Let it never come to that.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451, with Afterward and Coda. Del Rey Books, 1996. Text.