This is my first time reading Fahrenheit 451. I know that a big message in the book is supposedly censorship and what it has done or will do to our society. The implication is how it will affect our future and how censorship is affecting us in the present day.
However, I came across a certain passage that makes me question in what ways we have already been affected by censorship. How much of our history has already been lost? What of it has been altered?
This thought came to me on page 32, when Montag is thinking about the first "Firemen of America", one of whom is Ben Franklin. This, based on our understanding of history, is absolutely crazy, because we understand Benjamin Franklin to have been a great reader and writer and seemingly someone who would have never condoned the burning of books, instead valuing their insight and all they have to offer. Still, Fahrenheit 451 says that Franklin burned English-influenced books which sounds a little more plausible if you were to twist history in the right places.
But this made me think, how do we KNOW that the history we've learned about is correct? Most people with common sense know that history is not typically written by those who are right, only those who are left. Our society relies on those in power to give us an accurate depiction of history. Thankfully, we have become a society that is much more critical of history, and we question it often, because we know that history is traditionally white, straight, male, and Eurocentric.
Still, I'm not only thinking about who wrote history, but who erased it as well. I often forget about the existence of the Dark Ages, and the centuries of scientific and intellectual oppression. I forget that book burning was extremely prevalent during this time. I forget that book burning was so prevalent that linguistic oppression went hand-in-hand with the scientific, and during this time much of the English language changed altogether, yet we have no record of how or why, only that it did.
But wait, I can't even call them the Dark Ages because the term was coined during the Enlightenment period, and is now a widely discredited term because of how misleading it has become in popular culture. History becomes written and rewritten and rewritten again and yet we have to audacity to frequently assume that what we perceive is Truth. We dare to tell people what they can or can't say or write because it doesn't fit what we understand about the world. But censorship is not the enemy; ignorance is. The belief that one person has the right to shut down another on no basis other than someone might find it offensive.
I would like to reemphasize that I believe in censorship when necessary; specifically when it has the ability to incite harm or violence. Still, I don't agree with censorship occurring only because it disagrees with someone else's world view. Ideas do not deserve to be shut down, no matter how disagreeable they are. I believe this because change will be brought about, but not in the way one might hope. If you shut down a racist's idea rather than have a conversation their opinion will only be strengthened rather than changed. Their ideas may not be agreeable, but they are worth hearing because otherwise we are doomed tot repeat history and destroy each other fighting for what we believe in and we don't know who will come out the winners and who will get to rewrite history once again.
The fact that what we are told and taught to be "Truth" is filtered through those in position of power speaks highly on how much society actually values progress or change. Many people are still fighting for things to remain the way they are or to return to prior ways (*cough cough* Make America Great Again) when the past is the past for a reason. Many value this idea because it continuously favors them. So when censoring or limiting certain aspects of speech, it's all a question of who is really being censored.
ReplyDeleteI could not agree with you more. Openmindedness is something I believe is so crucial in today's world. If more and more people had openminds, then change would occur more. your comment " If you shut down a racist's idea rather than have a conversation their opinion will only be strengthened rather than changed" this opened my mind even more. The way you explained that was just perfect. There is no other word to describe that. Well done!
ReplyDeleteYes! The passage about Benjamin Franklin is super interesting to think about in the context of today. When thinking about the censorship of history, I always go back to Christopher Columbus and his "discovery" of America. A small shift in semantics can completely change how a generation remembers history--we always need to be on the lookout for what stories might be un/intentionally concealed from our history books.
ReplyDeleteOn your second point about needing to allow offensive speech in order to create change, I thought about the decision to ban Trump from Twitter. On one hand, people were concerned that deleting his account would mean that we would lose pieces of history or that the absence of his controversial tweets would somehow lessen the push to get him out of office. But on the other hand, there were worries that his tweets have and would continue to spread misinformation and incite violence. I can see both sides to this argument, perhaps a question worth debating could be: what's more important, preserving history at the potential cost of present lives or protecting the people today at the risk of skewing history?
Ahh, yes: history is written by those who are its victors. I was hoping this would be a discussion in this class! One of the greatest examples of this is the inclusion of concentration camps in American history. I had to do personal history search in order to learn about the attrocities committed in Japanese internment camps on our nation's soil during WWII. History is so interesting to analyze while keeping freedom of speech in mind; the subject is supposed to be a true recrd of facts, but is so often painted by biases. It seems imperative to have recordings of history side by side, with personal anecdotes from a wide variety of citizens, to capture the truth of the shared expereince. We also need to consider the kind of history people are receiving; there may be a huge difference in historical texts depending on the publisher and their biases or interests as well. We must remain vigilant to ensure that our history is not being rewritten as it is recorded.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a good and relevant post! I can't help but think about my future as an educator and how this can impact the information I am teaching in my classroom or even the books that I choose to teach about. Often times the historical information that we teach isn't entirely accurate because of this exact thing you are talking about. I think it's important to be able to distinguish reliable sources and do our own research. However, its also important to look at texts in a way which we are able to reach conclusions that are logical and accurate. SO by looking at a wide array of text, the information we know may be more accurate.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree with the other comments here. It is an extremely relevant post as we saw last summer with the Black Lives Matter movement, the south was quickly forced to look at the real history.
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