Monday, September 28, 2009

Banned Books Week

And here are the most-banned books of 2008. Most of which are quite forgettable (if the Gossip Girls books had never been written the world would be no worse off), but... The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini?

This just goes to show the problem with banning books. Once you develop the mindset that it's okay to ban books, your aim goes from the trash that the world would not be any worse with out (e.g. Gossip Girls to collateral damage that is simply unacceptable (The Kite Runner). It's a slippery slope, and it's an unnecessary slippery slope, because it implies that books can hurt people. Well, unless you manage to bang someone over the head with a big heavy one (I suggest a hard-bound college dictionary), nobody gets hurt by even the trashiest of books.

But of course, that's not what people mean when they whine about "harmful" books. What they really mean is, "books that contradict my own personal prejudices and biases." It's all about closing off access to ideas that book banners don't like, in the end, and thus results in a world that is less than if the book banners had been left to die on a hillside somewhere the day after birth. It's about making the world a meaner, smaller, place. Which is what the book banners want, in the end -- a world where only themselves, and people exactly like themselves, exist, and where the rest of us -- penguins and people alike -- simply *aren't*. It's the same goal that motivated the Nazis, in the end: the goal to make the "master race" and "master ideology" be the *only* race and *only* ideology. Except that the book banners would be appalled if you mentioned that to them, because they insist they're just making sure that only the "right" ideas can get into their children's hands, and don't see that there is no difference between their notion of "right" ideas, and the Nazi conception of a "master ideology"...

-- Badtux the Ideas Penguin

8 comments:

  1. Yeah, it's worthless to try to ban books, it just makes others want to read them.

    Ban the bible and it will make it an even more dangerous book than it is now.

    Maybe what needs to be done is to ban a lot of other books so that others want to read them and will forget about the frigging bible.

    But these monkeys seem to love fiction.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tux, speaking of the Nazis and book banning and the power of words-
    I don't know if you're familiar with The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It's marketed in the US as "Young Adult" but it's really not.
    Highly recommended food for thought on this issue is rolled into a wonderful story.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When I worked in a public library, I used to mark banned Books Week with a "controversial" display of notable banned and/or challenged books. But it didn't have much visceral impact, because many of them were so innocuous that no one could believe they had actually been banned. I scratched my head about them as well ("A Wrinkle in Time? Really?")

    ReplyDelete
  4. I see your point, but can't completely agree with it. Forging individuals into a society necessarily means trying to promote some views as the core of the social consensus.

    In our society, the consensus favors democracy. It also favors an egalitarianism that forbids discrimination by race, gender, or religion but tolerates differential treatment by wealth, attractiveness, and connections. The general consensus favors religion, but most any religion will do.

    Questioning any of the above too loudly tends to get one labelled a crank. Further punishments are rarely used because our society considers itself tolerant, and also because being considered a crank by society is actually fairly unpleasant.

    My point is that total freedom is as unworkable for humanity as is total harmony, and that compromise between the two will always be necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Forging individuals into a society necessarily means trying to promote some views as the core of the social consensus.

    There's a difference between promoting some views, and actively suppressing views you disagree with.

    Questioning any of the above too loudly tends to get one labelled a crank.

    In general, cranks get labelled cranks because they have views that are unsupportable by data, not because they have views that contradict prevailing "conventional wisdom". For example, P.Z. Myers over at Pharyngula goes against "conventional wisdom" on the whole issue of religion, but nobody really considers him a crank because his views do have some data to back them up. That guy who calls the local radio station to complain that aliens are entering his house and hiding his car keys is a crank, on the other hand -- there is not a single bit of data to suggest that aliens exist, much less that they would care to enter this guy's house and move his car keys.

    My point is that total freedom is as unworkable for humanity as is total harmony, and that compromise between the two will always be necessary.

    But any society which suppresses the free exchange of ideas invariably stagnates and becomes out-competed by younger more dynamic societies. Nobody says that societies must tolerate all possible forms of behavior, just that a free exchange of ideas is necessary in order to maintain the dynamicism needed for societies to adapt to changing conditions. Burning books invariably leads to the end of societies, not to the sort of social cohesion that you envision. Some instability is not only acceptable, but necessary, in order for societies to evolve to meet changing conditions.

    - Badtux the Socio-Anthropology Penguin

    ReplyDelete
  6. Even though they don't realise it (because they've probably never read the book) book-banners are operating from the underlying premise of Newspeak in "1984": if you suppress an idea, people won't be able to think it. If there are no words to describe something, can you even conceive it?

    If there are no books about homosexuality, or atheism, or whatever they fear, maybe those ideas will just go away! And we can have nothing but happy bland books about white people doing good things! Puts me in mind of that sci-fi story about the mutant boy who could zap people into graves in the cornfield if he got angry -- "I must not think bad thoughts."

    ReplyDelete
  7. . . .there is not a single bit of data to suggest that aliens exist . . .

    Will shit! You just ruined my day.

    JzB the alienated trombonist

    ReplyDelete
  8. By banning certain books, they're trying to fight certain views that they deem heretical.

    By writing this post, Tux was trying to fight the (to his mind heretical) views of the heretic-fighters.

    I mostly agree with Tux, but can't help noticing the irony.

    ReplyDelete

Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.

WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.