Timothy Leary, the psychedelic LSD guru of the late 1960’s, once said to “Put fire and iron underground. Progress is regression”.
He had it right in some ways, ways that matter. With the growth of technology has come a decrease in printed books as more and more people get all their information directly off the Internet. You can now buy books online, primarily from Amazon, and download them as a file, and read them at your leisure on your smartphone or laptop.
As I said, primarily from Amazon. This has given them a new power, the power to ban books they don’t like, and they’re exercising that power to effectively “burn” books, the latest casualties being the Dr. Seuss books, of all things. They’re claiming the books are racist. So what if they are? Many books are, and they chronicle the past. Racist history should never be forbidden knowledge else we forget how things were.
When booksellers refuse to sell any particular book because of it’s content, and that content is legal content, they’re doing the same thing the Nazis did.
We have Wikipedia editing everything politically, Facebook and Twitter banning people’s accounts for their politics, Google politically blocking access to websites and Amazon burning books they object to politically, and all these companies working in concert politically.
I wasn’t going to get into politics on this blog and I’m still not, (hold your laughter) because I’m not taking sides here, I’m simply reporting facts.
I see the banning of access to information as being regressive, since it’s that same access that allows our technology to advance, and while banning some children’s books may not seem like a threat to technology, it is because that’s merely a start and if allowed to continue, banning avenues of research is next. One line of research that’s already been heavily restricted because of politics is stem cell research, which offers the possibility literally of remaking humanity.
As it is, a lot more has already been banned by the above companies, with many joining them, than just children’s books and this stifles creative thinking and free expression, both necessary to the advance of human civilization.
Back in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church, which was the only form of Christianity back then and very powerful, was having people tortured to death and burned at the stake for their scientific discoveries and ideas that disagreed with Church dogma. The Catholic Church set the advance of humanity back at least 3 centuries. If not for them we’d probably be floating around on real
Back To The Future hoverboards and already have colonies on the Moon and Mars.
I hope the arbiters of what we’re allowed to know come to their senses soon. We really don’t need a repetition of those dark repressive times.