“I’m with the banned.”
A recent Independent edition of On The Ground, “The Town Torn Apart by Books”, focused on one of my neighboring communities, Granbury, Tx, and the restrictive book bans in the Granbury ISD.
What occurred to me, as I was watching the eight-minute report, was that banning books is as much about avoiding ideas that don’t match a particular worldview as it is to try to extirpate community members who follow a specific lifestyle.
Ideas are dangerous, make no mistake. The genesis of heliocentric theory, generated by Copernicus, helped us develop the idea of a sun-centered system, eliminating the ego-driven Earth-centric universe ideas. The idea of a country, able to throw off the shackles of unreasonable tyranny and govern itself was revolutionary 225 years ago. The concept of an algorithm driving an individual’s reality was unheard of just 20 years ago.
But here we are.
Ray Bradbury said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.” Kurt Vonnegut understood the value of the banned book: his masterwork Slaughterhouse Five has been banned on at least 18 occasions.
One thing I learned from being a child: if you take something away from me, you create a driving need to reacquire it. Denial is a carrot on the stick.
One thing I learned from my dogs: if you take a toy or treat away and put it on a high shelf, the dog’s focus will never drift from it.
One thing I learned as a parent: children are drawn to whatever is forbidden.
Books won’t change children; parents’ actions change children. Ideas are like weeds: they take hold where no other plants flourish.
Bingo Fitzpatrick 