Guest post: They’re books, not unexploded bombs
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Might be.
…with officials planning to draw up guidance for librarians and readers on how to cope with them.e
They’re just books, not unexploded bombs. The way to “cope” with them is to read more books. There are going to be lots of publications with old, outdated ideas that have been superceded by more information and what we believe to be a better understanding. It is still important to keep the “outdated” books because it lets us see the context of the past, lets us see where we’ve come from, etc. Discovering the widespread, casual racism of the past can be alarming, but it’s better to have that awareness (and the evidence for it) than to pretend it didn’t exist, or to believe it will disappear with the removal of some statues and books. There going to be lots of ideas in the world that one might find upsetting or angering. Those ideas aren’t going to go away; neither are the people who espouse them. In the end, what’s important is determining whether or not an idea is good or not, true or not, and useful or not. Good, true, and useful do not always line up the way we’d like them to.
But…dear “university library,” most books might be problematic or harmful.* There’s always that potential in nearly everything.
If you’re going to be emotionally crippled and scarred from ideas you find in books, then university might not be the place for you. Maybe reading altogether. If you’re going to use your claimed, personal discomfort (or that of some poor, helpless, marginalized, possibly hypothetical “other”), then working in a library might not be for you. Unless you pack any commitee you form to evaluate books for their “offensiveness” with like-minded people, few or none will escape censure and condemnation. Few books outside of phone directories will fail to piss off somebody. Your publicly accessible shelves are going to end up being rather bare, your padlocked stacks of “problematic” books nearly infinite.
Newton is remembered for some good ideas about the nature of the physical universe; his biblical and spiritual ideas have not stood the test of time. He likely also held ideas that we would consider bigoted and offensive. But would we have been given the useful physics without the wacky and the wicked, or are they all part of the package, with posterity left to separate the wheat from the chaff? Even geniuses can be wrong, misguided or offensive; sometimes the village idiot, bigot or misanthrope can speak the truth. There’s no knowing in advance who will say what. This winnowing is an ongoing process in which we all take part. What ideas do we assent to, pass along, and amplify? What’s our level of quality control? What do we do if we find out we’re wrong? It’s a truism, but it’s useful to remember that ideas can change the world. The best and the worst that humans do and have done all started with ideas that were picked up and put into action by a sufficient number of people. Without followers and doers, ideas go nowhere and do nothing. Timing and quality control are vital. There are bad times for good ideas, and good times for bad ones. Hitler without supporters would have been a crank. Alone, he could have done nothing. Acceptance, proliferation, and realization of his ideas led to the deaths of tens of millions of people. We are in a crisis period even more dire in its possible outcomes than the last World War. The ideas we put into reality will determine our future as a society and a species, with much of the rest of the biosphere along for the ride as powerless, innocent bystanders and collateral damage. What we think and do matters. What we don’t think and don’t do also matters.
With the volume of information, ideas and knowledge out there, it’s impoosible to avoid relying on authority, but you can still try to vet the authorities upon whom you rely. I know many of us here have been disappointed by the ideological capture of authorities we’d like to be able to depend upon; it’s disconcerting to find them parading around their obliviousness and inconsistency, displaying the blind spots in their own quality control. It makes it harder to trust anything they say on any subject. As uncomfortable as it might be, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to learn that they’re human and fallible too, that they can be as wrong about things as anyone else, including ourselves. The answer is not to shut them up, shout them down or ban them, but to discuss and debate. Easier said than done. But we have the tools, we just need to know how best, and when, to use them.
An unwillingness to engage in open, honest, goodfaith debate is not a good advertisement for the quality of one’s arguments. Claiming to have the moral high ground is not the same as earning it and keeping it. You can’t do it by fiat, because you might not have convinced anyone that your position is correct and defencible. Saying it is doesn’t prevent you from having to do the hard work required, it just delays it. If you can’t argue your position, you have no reason to hold it, and even less to proclaim its justice or superiority. If your ideas are so good, explain them to us and justify them. We can use some good ideas, the more the better. If you have the courage of your conviction, then you should be willing to put them to the test. If they pass, great. If they don’t, that’s also great because we can stop going down a blind alley we can ill afford to waste time and effort on.
*The books I find most “problematic” are the stupid ones that are wastes of paper. Books by “psychics” and “astrologers?” A waste. I’d be happy if our library system decided not to buy them for its collection. But that’s just me. If there wasn’t a market, they might stll be written, but they wouldn’t be published. And of course, as Ophelia points out, the right answer is education.
https://www.salon.com/2001/04/06/krugman_4/
I wonder whether the very ease with which presentations of information can be updated in the highly connected digital age plays any role in engendering this sort of paranoia. Approaching the end of my sixth decade, I can recall from my youth the valuable discipline of critically evaluating older books available at the public library which, being published before Mariner 4’s encounter with Mars, treated seriously, and in good faith, the possibility of primitive photosynthesizing life being present on its surface.
Perhaps a world in which updating public information sources is expensive is one which generates a culture of constructive and reflective scepticism. By contrast, once updating information becomes cheap the assumption of good faith, and the willingness to empathise with the author, is replaced with an attitude of “Why should I cut any slack to a publisher of fake news?”
“If your ideas are so good, explain them to us and justify them.” — YNnB?
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Einstein
“Some people are just full of shit.” — twiliter
Universally, censorship, book-burnings, bannings and the like have been the resort of tyrants and such who seek to control ideas, typically because they fear them. If I have control of another’s supply of air, water, food, and in the modern world, money, then I have near total control of that person. The list is completed with the addition of ideas, on which latter the German philosopher GWF Hegel had a fair bit to say..
This is summed up well in the old German Folk Song Die Gedanken Sind Frei (In English: Thoughts are Free)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4
Few books outside of phone directories will fail to piss off somebody.
Phone directories piss me off they’re so in the tank for alphabetical order.
An obvious consequence of removing books from a university library on such grounds as are being cited is that others who disagree with you will feel justified in calling for the removal or banning of books that they dislike. De Santis’s regime in Florida, for instance.
In any event, the books in a university library are there primarily for the purpose of research and stimulating thought, and not for the purpose of brainwashing supposedly impressionable students.
I am perfectly happy to read the books of that nasty old Nazi Carl Schmitt, or the novels, diaries & essays of Ernst Juenger, and I enjoy Rudyard Kipling’s work despite being in profound disagreement with many of his views. Incidentally, Kipling’s late story ‘Mary Postgate’ is one of the most brilliantly horrible short stories in English; another is ‘The Wish House’. I recommend them – they can be found on-line.
Omar, I enjoyed ‘Die Gedanken Sind Frei’! Thank you!
Similar themes at
Evan Mandery “Sick of Cancel Culture? One Man Has a Surprising Solution.” Politico 10/21/2023
Greg Lukianoff is on a quest to heal a fractured nation and guard America’s liberties — if it’s not already too late.
FIRE: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
FIRE recently changed the E from Education to Expression.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt “The Coddling of the American Mind” [I have not read the book]
Tim @#6: Don’t Mention it.