Philosophy Universe

PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSE - EP.5: BOOK BURNING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: RAY BRADBURY AND CANCEL CULTURE

Dear listeners: When planning the podcasts on Fahrenheit 451, I thought of book-burning as a metaphor. I did not think I would have to talk about actual book burning! And yet I read in the Wall Street Journal from just a few months ago that in Southwestern Ontario – yes, Canada – a school board organized the burning of 4700 books – children’s books from 30 different schools – in something they called a “flame purification ceremony.” That is a lot of books. This was done, I quote, to “bury the ashes of racism, discrimination and stereotypes.”
If you find the story confusing, you are not alone. Fighting racism, discrimination, and… stereotypes by… burning books? Has the world finally gone completely mad?
At the same time, and on the other end of the political spectrum, we find also news of activists – let’s call them that – walking into Ohio libraries armed with guns, and demanding that certain books be banned, and a decision from the government of Florida that ended in entire school libraries being emptied while the staff worked to ensure that books conformed to the incumbent government’s ideology. And this will be old news by the time I release this podcast. Everyday there’s something new.
These are very sad signs of our times. What are we to make of stories like this?
It is a very difficult subject – difficult, in particular, to try talking about it without people thinking that they are being personally attacked. And I doubt that my two cents here are much more than this—two cents. But if there was one thing that Ray Bradbury could not tolerate, it was the banning – and, of course, the burning – of books. So I think I owe it to him to conclude this small series on Fahrenheit 451 with at least a short reflection on one of the, well, burning topics of our times.
So Welcome to Philosophy Universe: A podcast about science fiction, philosophy, fantasy, and everything in between. I am Alfredo, and this is Episode 5: Book burning in the 21st Century: Ray Bradbury and Cancel Culture.
Wait a minute… cancel culture, you said? Now how could Ray Bradbury, who lived many decades ago, be talking about cancel culture? Isn’t this something that began, like, a decade ago, with the rise of “social media”?
Well, that’s the neat thing about both literature and philosophy: you can take something written decades, or centuries, or literally millennia ago, dust it off a little, and you will find that it is still relevant in some way. It will speak to us, in these complicated times. Because we are still human, and the problems are usually quite the same. So what if ancient peoples had scrolls, and we have tablets now – or hologram rings, in a few centuries, when the Eloi gather round the fire to listen my podcast. It doesn’t really matter. What really matters is looking under the surface, and adapting the questions a little, to fit the problems of present day.
Now, I don’t want to make this too long, but before going any further let me say one thing: I will be using in this podcast words such as progressive and conservative, but I must say from the beginning that I disagree very strongly with the current use of those terms. The terms are part of the problem, in my opinion; they perpetuate the problem. First, terms such as “progressive” and “conservative” define a sort of clear line for two ideological bands, so that everyone must be encapsulated into one or the other. This makes for very lazy thinking, of course! Rather than examining every issue in detail, people take them in blocks. So don’t let yourself be called one or the other. If people ask you what you want to be call, progressive or conservative, say something like, I don’t know --- pro-con! “I’m neither, I’m a pro-con”. Someone who is able to see the pros and cons in every view. That’s more the philosophical way. [Mandalorian-style] -- “This is the way.”
Second, the use of terms like progressive and conservative seem to imply – and for many people this is true – that right and wrong depend on whether a view is new or old. So a “progressive” will tend to think that new ideas are always right, and that everything that has a patina of tradition is, just by being old, wrong. On the other hand, someone “conservative” will be tempted to think that new ways, new ideas, new technologies, are bad just because they are new, or because “it is not how we do things around here.” But lice are old, and so are fleas, and you don’t want them on you. On the other hand, vaping is new; and during the worst of Covid no one that I know of went around saying “Yay, Covid, finally a new disease, so much better than the old ones!” Also don’t get me started on Disney remakes. Judging anything by whether it’s new or old is lazy thinking, too. Again, this is not the philosophical way.
In third place, I imagine that many of my listeners will be from the U.S., where these terms have very definite political implications, but what could be deemed “conservative” and “progressive” in other places would be very different. Not only that—what is new now will soon be old too. These are relative terms, and it doesn’t make things any better when people use them as absolute positions.
On the other hand, they are useful terms to speak about specific attitudes, and to describe, as misguided as it may be, the blocks of ideas commonly attributed to these bands. So I may need to use them in what follows.
So – Cancel culture.
The first thing a philosopher tries to do when dealing with complicated stuff is define the issue. This is something, by the way, that we also learn from Plato. Yep--it’s all in Plato. First, figure out what something means, and then try to figure out what to do. And so, what do we mean by “cancel culture”?
Here’s a definition I kind of just made up: Cancel culture is a coordinated reaction against a public figure’s statements or actions, (or against someone that became a public figure because of their statements or actions), which results in that figure being excluded from their common means of communicating with the public. As a result, their works are also systematically excluded.
Sometimes, to get a clear idea about something, it’s useful to see what that something is not. So I want to distinguish cancel culture from two things that may look similar. One is censorship, the other is a “boycott.”
Let’s look at boycott’s first, which I consider highly legitimate. Let’s say an author publishes something very offensive against, say, a religious group, or an ethnic group. In support of the group that has been offended or attacked, people in block turn their backs on that product, publication, movie, etc. Or people find their favorite product has been manufactured under unethical conditions, and decide not to support it any more until things change. It’s kind of “voting with your feet.” The product does poorly in the market because of people’s commitment, alerting those who back the product that this is not the way to go. This is a boycott. A boycott usually implies some degree of commitment. Without consistent commitment, the boycott doesn’t succeed. A thing that usually happens is, some people make their outrage public, and everyone flocks to the theaters (or now, to their streaming service) to see what it’s all about, making the offending product more popular and motivating the backers to do more of the same. In a boycott, everyone must hold the line, making sacrifices, mortifying their own curiosity or convenience or comfort.
Personally, I have a lot of respect for boycotts; they involve a degree of personal sacrifice and commitment. In the U.S., a key moment in the civil rights movement was the decision to [peacefully] boycott the bus companies because of their segregationist policies.
But boycotts can be very frustrating, because unless a large number of people are in the same boat with you, it’s difficult to achieve a critical mass that will change anything. You end up feeling like a voice shouting in the desert. And that’s when people resort to the other two methods, as a form of amplifying their voice. They are somewhat artificial ways of making everyone agree with you, and shutting up the dissenting voices.
Here I think I need to make that dreaded distinction. Censorship is, I would say, the preferred methodology of extreme conservatives. It’s—and I find this ironic–a top-down methodology. The strategy is to require of the government that they ban books or other media, or institute strict policies about what can be published, discussed and disseminated, using the weight of the law. Do I need to explain what’s wrong with it? Yes, I do, because if it were self-evident there would be no censorship around. First, let’s distinguish it from age-restrictions, like the ones we use for movies and no one complains about (except those affected by the age restrictions, namely, children under 13). I think it’s very legitimate to restrict what younger people are exposed to; I think the main guides here should be the parents, and their job should be made easier, so they don’t have to be constantly fighting against the media. I also think parents should cut teachers some slack, and not overreact the moment their kids are exposed to something inappropriate—but maybe that’s just me.
But that’s not what censorship does. Under the pretense of protecting children, it actually takes this decision away from parents. It puts the decision in the hands of some state official instead, and likely someone very ideologically charged, not the best person to be making such decisions.
Arguing from the protection of children to total cancellation has a long history: Socrates himself was condemned to death under the charges of “corrupting the youth.” It’s clearly a strong rhetorical piece. But censorship then takes one step further, and treats everyone, grownups included, as children who need to be protected. This is called “paternalism.” The argument is something like this: People who don’t see things my way obviously can’t be trusted with their own judgment, so they must be protected – along with people who don’t have an opinion but might come to the wrong conclusions. Of course no one ever says “this book could be bad for me;” we always ban for the sake of others. In short, censorship requires thinking that the majority of the population cannot think for themselves and come to their own conclusions.
This that I’m describing is the most benign form of censorship. More commonly, censorship is simply the other side of state propaganda, a way for a government to control the thoughts of a population, and keep them in the darkness – in the cave. Censorship is essentially anti-democratic. The conclusions, you can draw them by yourself.
Now, while censorship has a very long history, cancel culture, more strictly speaking, does seem to be a somewhat newer phenomenon. It is more of a tool of progressive extremists, if I’m allowed to use that expression; it does not rely on the government, generally, but rather it amplifies its voice by using the media in a bullish way. And it does this by converting certain topics and points of view into basically career minefields. Much like with censorship, a sort of “party line” of what is acceptable is quickly established, and anyone with some visibility, who strays away from the party line, does so at a high risk of being “cancelled.”
Now don’t get me wrong: the values defended are more often than not legitimate; they have to do with eliminating discrimination, combatting negative stereotypes, bringing to the spotlight moral deficiencies of our society and so forth. But these values benefit from discussion and analysis: are we overreacting? Are we overcompensating? Are we being anachronistic in our indictments? Is the data on which we base our analysis solid enough? These and others are important questions that should be asked when evaluating any views. But it becomes very dangerous to ask them around these minefield topics. And so moral discourse, which is a goal of philosophical thinking, gets replaced by fear and overreaction.
From here, at least three significant consequences follow.
First, no individual may raise questions that challenge the dominating viewpoint. Second, no individual may ever be seen as associated (even remotely) with the “banned” viewpoint. Third, individuals that are discovered to, sometime in their lifetimes, having espoused the banned viewpoint (or even made light of the dominant viewpoint) shall suffer cancellation, even if this happened decades before this became an issue.
In all cases, the common response is to attempt to punish the individuals; first, by demanding to their platform providers (their publisher, or their social media platform) that they be expelled, and secondly, by demanding of their employers that they dissociate themselves from the individual, i.e. fire the offending party.
Now, you may rightly say, is this a bad thing? If someone starts spouting hate speech, demeaning particular groups, or worse, calling up violence against specific constituencies, shouldn’t those actions have some consequences? Why would an employer want to continue associating themselves with someone who brings all sorts of negative publicity and, besides, may be the cause of groups being attacked, discriminated and so forth?
This is true, I think. The problem with cancel culture is what I call this minefield effect. When someone steps into one of these issues, however lightly, it either goes off or it doesn’t. But if it goes off, then the person is blown to bits, completely. There is no nuance, no listening to reasons, context, or attenuating circumstances. Cancel culture does not differentiate between someone trying to ask relevant questions about the legitimacy of a point of view, someone who got drunk and spoke out of turn, or someone advocating for violence in fanatic indignation. It makes no difference, as opposition is opposition, and it must be terminated! This is a gross misreading of many different situations. And it is likely intentional: why bother arguing with our opponents, when it is easier to shame them into submission, or drown their arguments in outrage?
So here’s the first effect of cancel culture: you can’t argue about landmines. Only “yes saying” is tolerated, and as a result, true rational discourse is eliminated. Not to mention people become extremely emotional about any challenges to the dominant viewpoint. So dialogue is destroyed.
Of course there are problematic cases that deserve some sort of community reaction. But the source of so many complaints about “cancel culture” is that it is not very reflective. It does not stop to consider how people are imperfect; how people sometimes say inappropriate things out of anger, or because they wanted to fit in a culture that is itself messed up, or even because they find it funny to say something inappropriate just to get a reaction out of someone; or because they lack empathy and can’t read the room and don’t get that someone got offended. These are, I would say, not deadly sins, but imperfections, and I’m sure there’s better ways of dealing with them that ruining someone’s career. Cancel culture tends to overreact, asks for blood rather than understanding. “Off with their heads!” It basically does not acknowledge that human beings are human.
I think you have to be very proud – in the bad sense, as in awfully full of yourself – to deny people second chances; you can only justify this if you think you never did anything wrong, and never will.
Now, I’ve been talking for a while; but where does Fahrenheit come into play?
In our last episode, we looked at Captain Beatty’s explanation for how this world of Fahrenheit came to be. He talked about speeding up, feeding everyone with entertainment, and keeping thinking to a minimum. But before this all took place, there was a previous step. Beatty describes a time in which the publishers realized that, whenever they let someone say something distinctive, or express a particular point of view, there would be someone that would complain. The publishers, moved by their fear of losing potential public, would quickly move to minimize these differences and particularities, as much as they could.
Here Captain Beatty is at his worse. He says (and I quote): “Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico.” (Notice how Bradbury is spreading this: it’s not about a specific group—it’s about stepping on the toes of a recognizable group!) Continuing with the quote, “The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that… Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca.”
So the paradoxical effect of avoiding controversy among particular groups is that in the end no one is represented! For fear that anyone who sees themselves represented may make a fuzz.
Now, this doesn’t completely apply today, you may say, and I agree. Think instead of the TV shows of the late 60s and the 70s, they were very vanilla. They were conceived as products that could be produced in Hollywood, and mass-marketed to the entire world. So everything was pretty light – very little mention of social issues, no specified religion except maybe some non-denominational Christian feeling. If you want to look at today’s equivalent, we have one: look at romantic movies during “Christmas,” (what here they call “Hallmark movies”), where Christmas is some vague feeling of good will that happens when it’s snowing in a little town. Zero mention of anything specifically religious, that may “alienate” viewers and turn them away.
Now, that was garbage for Bradbury. The more a story opens a window into an authentic world, the more interesting it is. We look, we crave for the telling detail of authenticity. This “vanilla tapioca” is what Bradbury is reacting against. This is why Faber, the teacher that is trying to mentor Montag, tells him – “Books have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores, it has features. This book can go under the microscope… Telling detail, fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.” [79]
Now, I think we are bouncing back from that vanilla era on TV. Books, of course, kept having “quality,” and now we see a big push for diversity, for voices from other cultures and walks of life. TV definitely bounced back, and thanks to streaming services in particular, we can even have access to tons of productions from very different cultures from ours. That is super cool. Movies? not so much – their attempts at inserting diversity look very artificial by comparison, unless you venture into the independent market. For the regular blockbusters, there’s too much money at play. But producers are catching up: more diversity means a wider public, not a more restricted one!
Still, Beatty’s words strike home in a way: producers are not afraid of diversity any more – ethnic, religious, gender diversity – but they are as afraid as anyone else of looking like they are against diversity. Since everything can be an issue, they spend an enormous amount of energy making sure everyone is “represented,” and comparatively very little energy making sure stories have individual flavor. They add to their stories different colors, but at times it feels like everything tastes the same. Maybe we’ve replaced vanilla tapioca with – I don’t know, Lucky Charms?
What is interesting is that, in the dynamic described by Bradbury (through his character, Beatty), this dumbification of stories as a result of cancel culture is then followed by censorship. Interestingly, Beatty notes, it didn’t take the government to shut down protesting voices: the people themselves asked for it! Once this is done, it’s just a matter for the government to follow through by actively eliminating all sources of dissent. Nobody cares, because at this point nobody really knows what they’re missing. So maybe this is what people mean when they say that “extremes touch.” Extreme right, extreme left, they all end in some sort of canceling or censorship, and this is very problematic.
So, to bring a somewhat long argument to its end, how does Bradbury help us make sense of cancel culture?
First, Bradbury’s story is a reminder that, if we want to “embrace diversity,” we need to embrace also the diversity that we don’t like. And by this I mean diversity of ideas. It is not really embracing diversity if I only embrace those who think like me. This can mean a big number of things, from hiring practices to whom you make friends with, to what books you choose to read and what channels you subscribe to.
This doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything – it’s how we deal with disagreement. Engaging in polemics, I would argue, is completely on the level. It can be done without meanness, and you could say it is a sign of respect towards your opponent that you take their ideas seriously enough to engage with them! (And it does not mean “insulting people in the comments section,” don’t do that. It does only harm.)
It is very possible that a lot of both cancel culture and censorship comes from a place of weakness, of being overdefensive rather than confident in the strength of one’s position. It’s not having the conviction that, given time, the best ideas will endure on their own merits. If you are in the right, you don’t need to bully people or make them fear you. Quoting Jesus here, “If I said something wrong, explain what I said that was wrong. But if I didn’t say something wrong, why do you hit me?”
Yet—here’s the next question: aren’t there times in which people have pushed opinions and ways of thinking that could be considered not just objectively wrong, but that become very harmful when people act on them? And what if they have no intention of getting into a dialogue? What do you do then? And some attentive listeners may ask, “I’ll give you one further: how do we even know that something is ‘objectively’ wrong?”
Good questions. Tough ones too. Right, wrong, evil and how to respond to it, these are part of a more fundamental area of philosophy, which we call “ethics.” Maybe we should have started there, before trying to figure out what is “wrong” with something like cancel culture.
So I propose, in the next few podcasts, to use science fiction and fantasy to talk about these thing. Let’s have a short series about fantasy, science fiction, and ethics.
We will start with a classic question: What would you do, if you had the power to become invisible? How would you use that power?
It will be a “primer in ethics,” in Philosophy Universe.
Thank you for listening!