How Do They Not Know... ?

In my recent reading of Fahrenheit 451, I am beginning to recognize how far the government goes to ensure society's ignorance and simplicity. The government takes away its people's knowledge, education, and worst of all - their individuality. It uses several distractions to divert people's attention to what seems to be constructive and important things. These so-called "things of importance" are nothing more than artificial pleasures which consume the mind in an almost "hypnotic" manner. Some of these distractions include the sea-shell radios and the television families. While skimming through an outside source, I read that "using these shells, people drift off to sea, so to speak, and lose sight of reality." Similarly, the "televised families" use a form of superficiality in order to mindlessly engulf the viewer's train of thought. In Fahrenheit 451, I believe that the government's essential goal is to provide its people with such a stimulated existence that those people forget to concentrate, to imagine, to question, and to live...