In Ray Bradbury’s insightful and sometimes prophetic novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the book-burning “fireman” comes to a crisis of conscience as he realizes that his career of burning books has created a society bereft of meaning, life and vibrancy. He seeks out and an old, retired English professor and asks him how things might be put right again. Montag assumes that the answers lay in the books he has burned over the years. Faber, the professor replies that it’s not that simple; society needs quality information, yes, but they need the leisure to assimilate and evaluate it as well as the freedom to act upon it.

Information and its role in society is a theme that you find all over the place. There are questions about the right of the Government to gather information about its citizens. Or there is the debates over intellectual property in which the entertainment industry would have you believe that they can still dictate what you do with music or movies that you bought and paid for. Visit your public library, and you confront the fact that the FBI can find out what you’ve checked out without your knowledge or consent, while a few heroic librarians fight tooth and nail to preserve the privacy of their patron’s records. Then we have the debate over the national news media, which is experiencing a crisis of public confidence as more and more people—rightly, in my view—recognize large media conglomerations as biased purveyors of marketing, spin, and propaganda masquerading as news and information.

So much for quality of information and freedoms associated with it. But what about leisure?

Bradbury’s Faber is absolutely correct. Speed… no, acceleration is the essence of modern life. Information flows faster, but at the same time seems to contain a smaller fraction that isn’t bogus, dated, irrelevant, subversive, or trying to sell you something. People work longer hours, and what diminishing time they do have to themselves is shouted down by TV, HDTV, DVDs, MMRPG, SMS or any number of time-stealers that may or may not be reducible to an acronym. There are also the demands that a consumer society puts upon its denizens. We are bombarded by distractions to an astonishing degree, so filled with non-combustible “information” that it’s a wonder our heads don’t simply pop.

In the midst of this data smog, the mind chokes and wheezes trying to keep up with the flow. Human minds were built to take in data and process it at a given speed. It takes time. Ideas and careful evaluations have certain incubation rates that cannot be rushed unless you can map them accurately to parallel problems. That is a skill that comes with time and experience. One can try to take in too much information, but without giving the mind time to chew it over, it does not stick and soon evaporates.

Another problem is that the term “leisure” has the connotation of idleness, vain pursuits, and general sloth. It does not admit that a writer or scholar might be working while they are looking out the window. Leisure also demands the mildly subversive notion that there are a lot of things that are simply not worth paying attention to (reality TV comes to mind). You can gain a huge measure of serenity simply by deciding that you are not obligated to pay attention to much of what “everyone else” thinks is indispensable. Consider it a first course in individualism and acquiring the charm of quirky eccentricity.

We live in a time where the leisure to examine thoughtfully what we read and see and hear must be hoarded or even fought for. Turning off the TV is one option, but I am leaning towards others as well. I like the idea of creating “ad-free zones” if only for yourself. I find that when I need some music and don’t feel like listening to a CD, I enjoy some of the “free” internet radio stations like Soma FM (which you should support if you listen to them) that don’t carry advertising. Public Radio (ditto) is another useful choice that can replace the nattering of advertiser-driven commercial radio. Satellite radio’s biggest selling point, in my opinion, is the lack of selling that goes on while you listen.

I could go on with specifics, but I think most thoughtful, thinking types are smart enough to carve out their own spaces of leisure, connotations and consumerism be damned, once they recognize that leisure is as much a resource for the guerrilla scholar as books or paper or a comfy office chair ever were.

I’ll be blogging more on the zen of learning more by slowing down in future installments.