It was Socrates who argued against the written word, for it was inferior to the ways of oral tradition. Thus it happened that his followers wrote his dialogues, in the same way that Zarathustra’s followers wrote what he established as the sacred ritual of oral teaching from one generation to the next. Socrates told the story of the god Theuth, inventor of letters. Thamus rebuked Theuth for his invention, saying that if words were recorded in permanence, the power of the mind would be lost. He had not improved memory, but invented a reminder, weakening the brain’s exercise in memorization. Because the written word cannot interact, and gives an unvarying answer to every question posed to it, it is inferior to the dialogue as a means of storytelling or philosophical exploration.
The following is a deleted scene from Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, with changes. Montag, a fireman charged with burning books, is shocked to discover that the Fire Chief owns a large inventory of books. The books have no power, and needn’t be burned, however, because he never reads them.
The Chief says when he once tried again to read books, he found he no longer could. He had lost practice; the words had lost their weight. The pages were blank, void of all meaning.
I have taken this scene and rewritten it to be about minds instead of books.
If Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn, what is the temperature at which brain cells burn? Rather than with flames, do they burn away with drugs, with the stifling of creativity, and with mere consumption of mediocre entertainment?
Own books and do not read them, and there is nothing to incinerate. Own a powerful mind, and do not use it, and the incineration has happened already.
“It’s not owning a mind that’s a crime, Montag, it’s using it! Don’t you see the beauty, Montag? I never use it. Not one thought, not one creative impulse, not one invention, not one criticism. I do play with ironies, don’t I? To have a powerful machine at my disposal and never to exercise it, to turn my back on the lot and say: No. It’s like having a house full of beautiful women and, smiling, not touching… one. So, you see, I’m not a criminal at all. If you ever catch me thinking, yes, then turn me in! But this place is as pure as a twelve-year-old virgin girl’s cream-white summer night bedroom. Each brain cell dies where it is. Why? Because I say so. I do not give it sustenance, no hope with hand or eye or tongue. It is no better than dust.”
Montag protests, “I don’t see how you can’t be-”
“Tempted?” cries the Fire Chief. “Oh, that was long ago. The apple is eaten and gone. The snake has returned to its tree. The garden has grown to weed and rust.”
“Once-” Montag hesitates, then continues, “Once you must have cared for your mind very much.”
“Touché!” the Fire Chief responds. “Below the belt. On the chin. Through the heart. Ripping the gut. Oh, look at me, Montag. The man who loved thoughts, no, the boy who was wild for them, insane enough to pretend, absurd enough to create, malignant enough to rule my own imaginary worlds, and innocent enough to believe it all was real. Yes, my mind once fed me and kept me in my waking and my sleeping. I invented my own terrors and calmed them, all with the plaything that was my mind. I explored and sustained myself, and ate my notions with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the concepts, turned the mysteries with my tongue! And then… and then…” The Fire Chief’s voice fades.
Montag prompts: “And then?”
“Why, life happened to me.” The Fire Chief shuts his eyes to remember. “Life. The usual. The same. The love that wasn’t quite right, the dream that went sour, the sex that fell apart, the deaths that came swiftly to friends not deserving, the murder of someone or another, the insanity of someone close, the slow death of a mother, the abrupt suicide of a father—a stampede of elephants, an onslaught of disease. And nowhere, nowhere the right thought for the right time to stuff in the crumbling wall of the breaking dam to hold back the deluge, give or take a metaphor, lose or find a simile. And by the far edge of thirty, and the near rim of thirty-one, I picked myself up, every bone broken, every centimeter of flesh abraded, bruised, or scarred. I looked in the mirror and found an old man lost behind the frightened face of a young man, saw a hatred there for everything and anything, you name it, I’d damn it. I tried again to coax my subconscious and what, what?”
Montag guesses. “Your mind was empty?”
“Bull’s eye! Blank! Oh, the words were there, all right, but they ran over my eyes like hot oil, signifying nothing. Offering no help, no solace, no peace, no harbor, no true love, no bed, no light.”