In memory of a great mind.

Ray Bradbury died yesterday. I am... speechless. Like, seriously, I've been working on this post for the past twenty-four hours because I am having trouble thinking of what to say. Because what can I say, what DO I say, what have I ever said, that he hasn't already said better?

Who was Ray Bradbury, to me? He was an idea. He was, in a sense, the idea of having ideas. Of thinking. Of free will. Of freedom. He wrote about these concepts in 1953, showing us a future in which thinking for ourselves would be unheard of. A future in which we are so enamored with our entertainment that we sacrifice thought itself to bask in the glorious glow of the screen. Think about that. He wrote that in 1953. It's 2012 now. How big is your TV? Mine is 42". And among many of the people I know, that's small. How long until entire walls are television screens? This is a future that I can definitely see happening.

Those on the left are all highly renowned scientists. The minds that pushed our civilization, our entire world, into the modern era. That one on the right is apparently famous for something and probably shitfaced. Is that the Jersey Shore chick? I dunno. But think about this. Take any of the greatest minds our world has seen. Philosophers. Theologians. Leaders. Writers. Put them on the left. If you're not aware of what makes their ideas important, if you don't know why their lives matter for humanity, but you know what's up with Little Miss Margarita over there, yeah, there might be a problem.

In Fahrenheit 451, nobody cares about ideas. They're too busy watching TV. Succumbing to the media. And the problem isn't actually with the media. It's with us.We submitted, we conform, we gave up freedom and independence. We gave up thought itself. We gave it up to such an extent that now firemen aren't people who put out fires, they're people who come to burn books. To destroy ideas.

"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none"

That's what is happening here. A book is more than just that. A book is ideas. A book is thoughts. Any civilization that writes is, thus far, a civilization that still reaches out to us, even centuries after they've faded out of existence. Written language allows us to communicate complex ideas. Stories - books - allow us to give ideas context. They give us perspectives. They allow us into the minds of characters, to experience the world through a different set of eyes. They allow us to think beyond our own reality. But more importantly, they challenge us to question our own ideas. They challenge us to ask why. This is something that the world NEEDS. This is something that humanity needs. Because when we ask ourselves why, why we hold certain values dear, why society is the way it is, why we behave a certain why, why we do the things we do, we are very often unsatisfied by the answers.

"She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead."

Books inspire us to ask why because they draw attention to conflict. Whether it be between two people, a group, or entire nations, conflict is an essential part of a story - hell, there can be only one character and I guarantee that conflict exists within that person. Conflict implies a problem. A problem implies that there is a solution. A solution implies that things can be better. Books force us to ask questions in search of a better world. When we read books, we become discontent with the world as it is. The reason for this is that books bring the world to us.

"Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book."

Read a book. Learn about your world. Ask questions. Demand answers. As Bradbury once said, you don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. Fahrenheit 451 was never about burning books. It was about a society who gave them up. Don't let that happen to our world. Don't let Ray Bradbury's warning go unheeded.

I'd like to close this post with my favorite passage from Fahrenheit 451:

"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation."