I've been thinking about the world in which I live in a great deal lately. I think namely because I'm somewhat distressed and somewhat 'I told you so' disappointed. The latter is tough because I am not an 'I told you so' sort of person. I try not to lay blame. I'm more of a 'I didn't see it go down like that' sort of person.
This is what I mean, we are in the midst of a conservative backlash right now. Not just us, I mean, much of the world. I don't get it, I don't want to get it. Daily I see the rights of many of my fellow world citizens being taken away. I'm especially concerned about women. I'm concerned for any population or group that is, or has been marginalized. I fear for these people. I also acknowledge that I am a white, straight, educated male living in modern America. I feel very fortunate.
One of my biggest concerns right now is this culture of banning books we seem to be steeped in. There is no way to sugarcoat this, any person who bans any book, for any reason, is a fucking Nazi. A fucking Nazi. And the only thing worse than a person who bans books is the person who burns books. I'm afraid we are only one Nazi heartbeat away from a book bonfire.
What about hate literature? Well, that's a tough one. Should it be banned? If you ban it, it will rise in importance and become more sought after. I would prefer to live in a world where hate literature doesn't exist. I also secretly think that a great deal of hate literature filters into mainstream textbooks. I may be wrong, it's just a suspicion.
My solution is rather than ban a book, teach critical thinking. I have people in my life who are voracious readers, and some of them will read these incredibly incendiary books and take it as fact, as gospel. When they suggest I read it, I usually ask who wrote it. If this is a 'science' text and it is written by only one person, I will not read the book. I will not invest my time reading something that is merely the ideas of one person and passed off as science. If I'm going to read a science text (natural, physical, social or otherwise) it has to be written and reviewed by writers and peers, this way, they police each other. I know that sounds petty on my part, but I will not take a single idea from a single mind and accept it as absolute truth. I suppose I'm now inviting you to question me, my thoughts, and my theories.
Works of fiction are another matter entirely. Banning a work of fiction is lower than the lowest of acts. We always joke that non-fiction may be fact, but fiction is truth. I believe that entirely.
I recently read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. I can talk about this book, probably, for the rest of my life. I was really taken with the characters, the story and the historical context in which it was written. It was published in 1937, the same year as John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and James Hilton's Lost Horizon. I think you could read these three books and get a pretty good understanding of what 1937 was like.
What I loved about Their Eyes Were Watching God was that it was a different world view from my own. I am not African American, nor do I have parents who were slaves, nor do I live in the 1930s rural south. I can only experience this through others. Since I live now and so far away from that time, I don't even have African American friends who have lived this life. Granted life for African Americans today has in many ways stayed the same as it was 100 years ago, I think there are many facets of that life which are better. I hope so anyway. The point is, if I want to understand a life different from my own, I have to experience it second hand.
It's a proven fact that people who read fiction have a greater empathy for other people than those who do not read fiction. I know this for myself to be true. I read a great deal, never enough, and I almost always read fiction. As I read about the conflicts of the characters in these books, I learn about who they are, what their culture is, and how through the power of humanity they can overcome it. I have learned about First Peoples, African Americans, immigrants, pioneers and LGBTQ people. I have gain perspectives and understandings and empathy and compassion for the people that are represented in characters in the books I read.
Now, if I lived in a place where these books were banned, I would miss out on that experience that I hold so dear. And missing out on that experience would result in my not having an understanding of the people the characters represent. And to further that, would I chose to discard the plights of others, become callous, uneducated and lack compassion?
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