Books

My Dictionary.com app's word-for-the-day is bibliophobe: a person who hates, fears, or distrusts books.

I suppose this word popped up because this is Banned Books Week.

The idea that certain books should be banned is interesting and (almost?) universal. The list of books that have been banned ranges from the Bible (yes, the Bible -- in part and in its entirety) to Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time  and To Kill a Mockingbird to James and the Giant Peach. You will find books of traditional Christian spirituality banned alongside sex manuals, popular children's books (even Dr. Seuss!) as well as horror stories and the inevitable Mark Twain classics, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.

As a librarian, as I have mentioned elsewhere, I have been tempted to hide some books that came into the library, books that I thought were misleading and divisive and destructive, books that were outright lies posing as truth. Yet over time I came to realize that the best way to oppose bad books is to expose them to the light and trust that the vast majority of readers will be able to see the foolishness for what it is.

This is a pretty optimistic view of the reading public's ability to discern truth, I will grant you. The ability of the mass media -- especially televised "news" programs -- to manipulate even our political process gives one pause.

Yet the alternative is letting me -- or some other ME -- decide what is safe. And as therapists across this great nation are asking their clients at this very moment, "How has that worked for you?"

Few bibliophobes -- book-fearers -- are afraid of all books. They/we tend to fear a particular kind of book, books that contain ideas that make us uncomfortable or angry. They/we worry about the power of such books to harm the young and the vulnerable. Our fears may have warrant. But banning books, burning books, hiding books away has never worked and never will.

It seems preferable to expose people to as many books, as many ideas, as many points of view as possible. Problems arise when people are exposed to only one point of view. That seems to be the problem with the above-mentioned "news" programs. When I watch only one network, I do not see that other people see things differently. I begin to think that there is only one reasonable perspective, only one truth -- the one that I know or have heard. And I begin to self-censor, I watch and read only programs and books that tell me what I want to hear, what I already believe. I allow nothing in to challenge me. If I think about other points of view, it is only to judge them negatively and think that those who hold such ideas are intentionally obstinate and even intrinsically evil. This can lead me to think, as it has led many people over the centuries to think, that is not the books that should be banned and burned, but that we should ban and burn the people who wrote those books or read those books. Sadly this has often happened in the name of God. In those cases, I suspect, in the name of the God-of-my-misunderstanding, as my friend Steve used to say.

Had the world always taken this path, what would have happened when Moses came back from the desert after his experience at the Burning Bush? What would have happened after Siddhartha got up from under the Bodhi tree? What would have happened when Jesus got up, soaking wet, from the River Jordan? Or when that group of American colonists gathered in Philadelphia to ponder their collective future? Or ... or ... or ...

It is better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness, as they say. 

I read that in a book somewhere. 

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