Sadeem Shamoun

This book is making me go through an existential crisis. Reading this book has made me take into account my use of technology to the point where I rarely use my phone for social media anymore. The main message I've gotten from this book is to take notice of worthwhile things and stop falling trap to all these short-lived dopamine triggers, such as social media. In my free time, I’ve even allocated the time I would spend playing video games to actually read some books, and surprisingly, I’ve been enjoying it. 

I believe our generation (or any generation, really) fails to see the perspective of the previous generation, and this book helps put that older mentality into mind. What is powerful in this book is that you really see the mindset of the older generation, which I have noticed is living a wholesome life and actually enjoying the world around you. When reading the book, you are forced to look at the story from Montag’s point of view. Then when Montag belittles Mildred and others that are brainwashed, you can really see how stupid they look from his standpoint.  Of course, the effects of technology on those people are highly exaggerated (for now), but it definitely helps get the message across. 

After doing research about new technologies in the 1950′s, I saw that TV’s and radios were the primary innovations. That kinda makes sense to me as this book could have been written to warn people about the dangers of media and the potential outcome of overusing media. Yet, you cannot help but notice how similar this book is to our world today.

In this dystopia, people fiend for instant satisfaction, or anything that gives you dopamine, For example, every household has a “parlor”, where people can interact and talk to a fake family on the screen. People in the story actually take their “families” seriously too, considering when Montag turned off the TV in front of 4 brainwashed women, they all freaked out. And for the most part, women are the most brainwashed since their husbands are sent to war, and the government has implemented the say, “It’s always someone else’s husband that dies”, and they don’t care about it. The story doesn’t give too much detail on this, but I think some of their husbands are already dead and they just keep telling them “He’ll be back in a week”, forever prolonging the lies fed to the citizens. 

Montag remembers a time when Clarisse told him how houses had porches, where people would just sit, enjoy the world, talk, or even just stay silent and think to themselves. The architects in the government, however, got rid of them because “they didn’t look good” with the actual underlying purpose of not wanted people to be their own anymore.  But now, everyone is always yapping and constantly stimulated through nonsense in the seashell radios in their ear. Also, fake families on the TV’s are pretty similar to reality TV shows today. 

Another thing you find in the book (which I fall victim of) is people driving fast as a coping mechanism whenever they’re stressed. Mildred always says “Take the beetle” and “get it up around 95 and you feel wonderful”. The government’s reason behind letting people do this is that when they’re on the verge of becoming woke, like Montag is, they drive so fast that the only thing you can think of is danger, relieving your mind of actual things you have to worry about. Ultimately, whatever these people do is to distract themselves from any problem whatsoever. 

Now if you take a technology from a little kid today, they might throw a tantrum or freak out because they’re sorta addicted to it, like how people of this society are. 

As I read this book I cannot help but notice how poor Montag is married to a lifeless woman like Mildred, who plays a role in his mid-life-crisis. Though the person who initiates his mid-life-crisis is Clarisse. As of now, I don’t know much about her. The only time Montag and Clarisse interacted was on Montag’s commute to work, where she would always be somewhere in his way. They would walk and talk, and at first Montag was not very fond of her, but her quirky nature intrigued him, so she grew on him. 

There was a moment in the book where they were walking together and Clarisse picks up a dandelion and rubs it under her chin, and if there is yellow that meant the person was in love, and there was yellow for Clarisse. But for Montag, there wasn’t any yellow because he wasn’t in love with Mildred. They laugh this off as a joke, but Montag kinda takes it deeply. Now I’m not sure how age and relationships worked back in the day, but her being 17 and him being 30 wasn’t too far off for that time in my opinion, and I can see them liking each other. This is reinforced by the emptiness he felt when he couldn’t find her on his commute to work, which is when the story ultimately started going downhill.

In an evidently dystopian society, Montag is a fireman that burns houses which books are found in. Everyone in this society seems a bit autonomous, and so is Montag, up until he meets Clarisse, a 17 year old who kinda makes him question his existence and role in the world. He realizes he has no love for his wife of ten years since she only lives with her television “family” and always has these ear-thimble-seashell things in her ear. These constantly play music and nonsensical radio talk to (which I had to look up on sparknotes to find) distract humans humans of their own thoughts and implement whatever thoughts the government wanted you to think. 

Then the book goes on to a scene where Montag is at work (fire department) and an old lady is found, guarding her books. She eventually ends up getting burnt with her books as she did not want to leave and would “rather die” with her books. She also says a quote from some literature about Master Ridley, apparently a person who burnt another person alive for heresy; belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine. 

This is how far I’ve gotten so far in my book. Now that I’ve gotten the summary out of the way (for my use to keep tabs on my reading), I can talk about what really interested me, which was the whole idea of the ear-thimble-seashell things. I found it fascinating how Ray Bradbury could imagine something so futuristic that actually ended up being produced. These things are basically like airpods or any wireless earbuds. Their purpose is to literally distract you from the world around you so your mind can be controlled by media that government broadcasts. These cause Mildred, Montags wife, to act lifeless as she is living in her own world, and they are always on. She has even became a “master lip reader” because of them.

During my philosophy class at OCC, the topic of how a society can be a utopia or dystopia came up frequently as we discussed philosophers. My professor specifically recommended this book when we were talking about George Berkeley. His belief was that “God” or “a higher being” existed in order to organize our waking experience and keep objects in existence when no one is perceiving them. This relates to 1984 as Big Brother’s omnipotence, in a way, organizes their waking experiences and is always there, watching, making sure everything is in place. 

Arizona Iced Tea’s approach to pricing their beverages, as far as I know, is pretty original. Not only the pricing, but people’s expectations for pricing. You can walk into any gas station and expect it to be 99 cents. Even with their plastic bottles with bottle caps, it’s still 99 cents, but they make up for it by having less drink in the container. Regardless of what the drunk is, it’s always 99 cents.

Some stores that are solely profit driven and don’t respect the culture may price it up to $2, but that does not apply to this originality.

When they were conducting experiments of LSD on animals, they saw that it took a lot higher does to achieve hallucinogenic effects within animals. Lower animals (animals that are basically stupid) had little to no effect from LSD, such as a mouse with the only difference is slight motor skill disturbances. In cats, however, hallucinations were obvious because of salivating, hair standing up, not attacking mice but leaving them alone or being scared of them, etc.

Microdosing is the act of taking less than half the threshold amount of a psychedelic in order to experience its positive effects but not completely trip. This video explains it more in depth:

https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_death.shtml

In my previous blog I talked about how it is impossible to overdose from LSD, only if used properly though.

In the Psychedelic Encyclopedia, it is said that the LD50 (50% chance of life or death) of LSD is 14mg, or 14,000mcg, which is 140 times more than the normal dose of one tab, which is 100mcg. There have been reported cases of people taking 40mg of LSD and being completely fine after, which might indicate that the LD50 is 40,000mcg.(?)

Currently, all psychedelics are a schedule I drug, which means that they are completely banned by the DIA. What I find funny though is how you can buy “research chemicals” online on the normal web (not dark web) and they are only labeled as, “All our products are strictly for laboratory use only and are not approved for human consumption.”. A good example of this is the website https://lysergi.com.

This 1.) shows how corrupt our drug policy is in the United States and more importantly 2.) leads to life threatening substances on the market for everyone to purchase.

Now, LSD itself is completely physically harmless and it is physically impossible to overdose and die from the substance of used properly, but there are other drugs that give similar or same effects as LSD that can be bought which would kill you with a few micrograms. The website listed above only sells safe synthetic LSD and psychedelics, though. Also it is hard to find the synthetic LSD that can kill you, but it is out there.

https://youtu.be/wG5JyorwYPo

Cancer patients are usually very anxious and are in some cases depressed because of the condition they’re in. Studies from New York University and John Hopkins have shown that LSD has gotten rid of the anxiety or depresssion within cancer patients by mainly alleviating their fear of death. Some patients claim they’ve had encounters with god on this drug, which is why they fear death less. Others say that since your perspective on life and the universe is so much broader when you’re on the drug that you have an ego death and since ego is everything, it feels like an actual death. After that people say they feel like a new and improved person.

As many of you know, Steve Jobs was the Co-founder of Apple, alongside Steve Wozniak. LSD is mentioned many times in his biography, specifically pages 19, 41, 57, and 107. He started “dropping acid” acid in his senior year of high school just out of curiosity.

On page 41, he starts talking about the effect it had on his life by saying, “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

There was also a quote from the author, Walter Isaacson, interviewing him about LSD which I couldn’t find. Basically he asked him if he regrets doing drugs and specifically dropping acid and he replied with something along the lines of “No, I don’t regret it because I wouldn’t be who I am today without it”. Don’t quote me o that, though.