Narrative and Alienation

Short post today, inspired by this amazing video of Ray Bradbury, who has a lot to say to us about the challenge of focus, engagement, and identity. Watch it now.

He says so much here, it's hard to know where to start, but one thing that really struck me as profoundly current to our present set of challenges was his comment about the purifying effect of fully experiencing your own mind. The man who becomes alienated from himself, that cannot laugh or cry freely will find his energies turned inward destructively instead. Bradbury wrote extensively about these ideas 60 years ago -- Fahrenheit 451 was written in 1953, and this video recorded in the 1960s -- and yet these words could have been written today.