Imagine a town called Learnerville.
Within Learnerville there is a building. All the windows are boarded, and all the doors are locked. The building is guarded by armed officers. Inside, there are copies of all the books in the Learnerville world. Inside of those books, just as in our own reality, there is knowledge. No one is allowed to go inside the building, and technically no one in Learnerville is allowed to produce, own, read, or trade books.
The situation is not all so bad. Books aren’t that complicated to make, and they are pretty easy to hide and smuggle. So, a lot of Learnervillians still possess and enjoy books nonetheless. Some might even say that certain books are ubiquitous despite their prohibition… certainly not all books. Others are almost impossible to find, and many of those that can be found are only accessible at extreme costs.
Hence, the same legal authorities that patrol the building have taken aggressive efforts to forestall the production and distribution of books. Vehicles, guns, a vast variety of equipment and armor are all routinely deployed to seek out, confiscate and eradicate books. Those who produce, possess, read or share books are often tried and punished.
Throughout Learnerville live a wide variety of people. Different Learnervillians like books to different degrees, and some residents prefer certain books over others. Some are immensely happy and successful despite their limited access to books. Other Learnervillians seriously struggle and endure lives of significant hardship and suffering.
In Learnerville, there is a well-known and well-understood relationship between some of the locked away books and some of the struggles endured. Knowledge works like magic, but perhaps slow and indirectly. Some books can dull pain while others can cure diseases. Some books can inspire motivation and passion in the listless. Some books can even transport the reader to seemingly alternate realities filled with indescribable fantasy. Hence, many of the problems that Learnervillians endure can be fully resolved, and others made at least a little bit better… if only Learners could study and glean the knowledge contained in certain books.
The saddest and most horrific feature of this story is that most Learnervillians are complicit to their constriction.
I am thankful to live in a relatively free society far afield from Learnerville, wherein the default reaction to the prohibition of books is disgust. From Zamayatin to Orwell to Huxley and many others since and in between, the prohibition and regulation of knowledge, human communication and free expression is viewed as the archetypal feature of dystopia.
This consensus about the banning of books, monitored behaviors and policed speech sustains despite a similarly common understanding that not all books are good. Lots of books contain horrible ideas. In the wrong hands many can be dangerous. And yet, most reasonable people today recognize and fully accept the obvious truism that the overall effects of books are positive. We shouldn’t ban books! Not because they are without risks, but because their potential benefits obviously exceed their potential costs.
READER COMMENTS
Andre
Apr 17 2023 at 8:38pm
Name a published book that a US citizen cannot purchase.
Monte
Apr 17 2023 at 10:40pm
Operation Dark Heart – In September 2010 the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) overrode the Army’s January approval for publication. The DoD then purchased and destroyed all 9,500 first edition copies, citing concerns that it contained classified information which could damage national security.
60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye – An unauthorized sequel to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger succeeded in obtaining a court injunction which indefinitely banned the publication, advertising or distribution of the book in the United States, though it has been published in other countries.
Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Banned in Tucson, Arizona.
nobody.really
Apr 17 2023 at 11:47pm
Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book (1971). I mean, I guess you could buy it–if you’re really bad at following instructions.
Monte
Apr 17 2023 at 11:13pm
Yes. A few that come to my mind, anyway, are Mein Kampf, Manifesto of the Communist Party, and The Satanic Bible. Nevertheless, I believe they should be made available to all, even enemies of reason.
And also because of our 1st Amendment right to read and listen to the ideas of others.
nobody.really
Apr 17 2023 at 11:45pm
Is this a post about books? I had assumed it was an allegory.
robc
Apr 18 2023 at 11:09am
Probably, but I think he is leaving that up to the reader to apply as they see fit.
If you actually complete the allegory, the comments will be full of people nitpicking how the situation is slightly different.
robc
Apr 18 2023 at 11:11am
Personally, I thought it was about guns at first then decided it was about drugs by the end.
Or maybe it is about books?
I like this approach better.
nobody.really
Apr 19 2023 at 1:36pm
“I think [Jesus just said] ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers’.”
“What’s so special about cheesemakers?”
“Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.”
Monty Python, The Life of Brian (1979)
gwern
Apr 18 2023 at 12:19pm
I thought it was going to be about copyright. You have to admit, ‘copyright’ fits all the stuff about healing better than some J.D. Salinger fanfic.
Richard W Fulmer
Apr 18 2023 at 2:41pm
Much of the debate over “banned” books is about what books should be available in school libraries. Given that shelf space is limited, someone has to decide whether to include book A or book B. I have no issues with a school board deciding to place Les Misérables on their bookshelves instead of Fifty Shades of Grey.
nobody.really
Apr 19 2023 at 1:05pm
I largely agree.
1: Generally, because no one has infinite resources, we just all must exercise judgment in allocating our resources. When government agents do this, this exercise of judgment can look a lot like content-based discrimination a/k/a censorship. Public school officials discriminate on the basis of message when they assign one book rather than another, or call on one student rather than another, or pick one book to put in the library rather than another. Moreover, SCOTUS approves of this kind of discrimination. In Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the court ruled that school officials can censor school-sponsored publications if their decision is “reasonably related to a legitimate pedagogical purpose.”
2: What if someone gives a book to the public school, so there’s no (or minimal) expenditure of resources? I surmise that school officials can still decline the gift if doing so is reasonably related to a legit pedagogical purpose.
3: More generally, I struggle with how to think about traditional liberal free speech norms in an internet era. Today pretty much anyone with a bare modicum of resources can gain access to almost any publication. In this context, do people seeking to ban/burn a specific book really impede free speech–or do they merely add their own (symbolic) speech?
Likewise, what importance should we attach to protesters shouting down a speaker at a given assembly? Ultimately the protesters cannot stop the speakers from disseminating their speeches on YouTube or on a TEDTalk channel. So arguably the net effect of protesting is to ADD speech. But to iterate the argument one more step, arguably the net effect of school administrators suppressing protests in order to permit a speaker to be heard is AGAIN to add speech–this time, the symbolic speech of the school administration defending liberal norms of free speech.
But now I’m getting off topic … assuming we know what D’Amico’s topic is….
David Seltzer
Apr 19 2023 at 4:15pm
One of the more egregious abuses of banning information and ideas gleaned from books, were the anti-literacy laws in many slave states. I suspect the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain were built not only to keep citizens from leaving but stopping ideas that threatened those totalitarian regimes from seeping through the cracks.
Małgorzata
Apr 20 2023 at 7:14am
The fact of the matter is that most books deepen our understanding of the world.
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