How does the value of life in Bradbury's fictional society become the way it is? How did the public lose any value of human life?

In Bradbury's dystopian society, books are censored, and intellectual pursuits are considered illegal. The population is completely ignorant, and the citizens are addicted to mass media and violence. In part 1 of the novel, Captain Beatty has a conversation with Montag in which he describes the dystopian society and explains how it developed. Captain Beatty essentially tells Montag the public lost interest in novels and was sick of being offended by intellectual critics. Society adjusted...

In Bradbury's dystopian society, books are censored, and intellectual pursuits are considered illegal. The population is completely ignorant, and the citizens are addicted to mass media and violence. In part 1 of the novel, Captain Beatty has a conversation with Montag in which he describes the dystopian society and explains how it developed. Captain Beatty essentially tells Montag the public lost interest in novels and was sick of being offended by intellectual critics. Society adjusted accordingly, and the majority of citizens stopped reading and engaging in intellectual pursuits. Schools ceased to teach children anything worthwhile and only physical activities were encouraged. Beatty describes society's trajectory by telling Montag,

Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more (Bradbury, 26).

In the absence of the literary arts, humans became less introspective and developed into callous beings whose only care was how long they were able to stare at a parlour wall each night. Since the literary arts are an expression of life and humanity as a whole, citizens began to lose value in human life. In Bradbury's society, everything became replaceable, even humans. In a society without substance and expression, the value of each human becomes irrelevant, which is why teenagers drive through the night at high speeds attempting to run people over. Individuality is not cherished and conformity reigns throughout Bradbury's dystopian society.