Dearest Editor Editing to y/our heart's content:
While I appreciate the schoolchildrens' letters to you on censorship, it might be better to put this in a larger context. I grew up in an ultraliberal home where we had all the books mentioned and a whole lot more. But as I grew older, I realized that while nothing, for instance, of a sexual nature was taboo, there were many many books and topics that were not at all welcome. And the more I see of, shall we say, "book clubs" (euphemistically called) and the more I study the human brain, the more I realize that censorship is something that we all do, all the time! It's still only as one caterpillar said, "The question is, who is to be master, that's all." To call exhibit A book selection/censorship a travesty is merely to try to elevate enculturated tastes to the plane of an ethical issue, which, while commonly done, has no scientific or rational basis. As Carroll implies, it can rise to no more than a Grade B political gambit.
This was pointed out forcefully by Aldous Huxley in "The Doors of Perception" as well as by implication in "Brave New World"...... we all have massive built-in filters that, by nature and nurture and choice, are the universal operational censors of the most open-minded (sic) brain systems. There are many books and magazines that we will rarely see even in large libraries or on sale at Borders--books which I hesitate to even mention because their very names elicit irrational rage in every level of our current version of "civilization". [ thank God for the internet--so far]
There is no inherent rational or scientific basis on which to gore someone elses's bull. But history shows that when one book is let out of the closet, thousands more go into recycle bin of the perceptions of men. And as usual, those who try so hard to loosen certain bodily and other cultural inhibitions are automatically censoring a vast array of other now-taboo subjects, thereby creating a vastly more inhibited empire than the one they supposedly displace; or subject to what is clearly "shunning", in the most postmodern and puritanical sense of the word.
It is clearly up to the reader to examine his herd of bull(s) and figure out the implications of the preceding....BOO!!!
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When I first looked at the title of this blog the first thing that came to me was "Hippie Hollow", that popular state park on Lake Travis, Texas. Since your latest post has to do with censorship I wonder if you subliminally came up with the name for your blog.
ReplyDeleteFor those not familiar with Hippie Hollow www.hippiehollow.com it is a well known state run nudist park. A good friend of mine used to visit it on weekends living in Dallas.
After reading your blog I can not decide what your feelings on censorship are. Being of the Libertarian persuasion I mostly agree with writers like Ray Bradbury "Fahrenheit 451" and George Orwell "1984". I have always believed that censorship does more harm than good. Recall the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, making something forbidden makes us humans want to experience it all the more. People often think that the allegorical tale of Adam and Eve was trying to teach us to have obedience to "God" but suppose it was trying to teach us that forbidding us humans something leads us to desire it more. Was this our first lesson into the dangers of censorship?
I watched a documentary of Aleister Crowley over the weekend, who people refer to as the "The Beast 666" the evilest man ever. He was born into a family of a very religious Quaker subset called the Exclusive Brethren. Most earthly pleasures were perceived as sinful and punishable by the Brethren. I find it no wonder that as Crowley got older and away from his family that he would go headlong into tasting the forbidden fruits denied him in childhood. From Crowley's "The Book of Law".... "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law".
He might have taken a look at the Wiccan Rede....
"Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill, An it harm none do what ye will."
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ReplyDeleteSorry Dennis, I missed this comment entirely but now that I read it again, I guess my point would be, and has been, that there is no definable party line that could be derived from the Holy Spirit, and to refer back to First Cor 13, about the "glass darkly" verse which I think may also have been a concept secularized by Bergman. Who also said, "I hope I never get so old that I become religious."
ReplyDeleteI would think it self-evident that theatre and cinema were his default religions. But nonetheless, I hope that in fact Bergman got his wish--but I think he was rather like the rest of us are still-- God's Spirit gives us a gift and we turn it into a privilege (religion) or a "right" (politics) but most usually both at once without a flicker of knowledge of what we have done.
In that regard I give L. Ron Hubbard an "H" for honesty--"I meant to do that" i.e. invent a new religion--something we all do, every day, in every carnal moment, a phenomenon that arises all the more self-evidentially in those who like to be seen like the Athenian crowd: "Gentlemen I see you are all very religious IN EVERY WAY." (Not much room for outside activities here, even when all you want to do is, "see and hear some new thing.)
Hence censorship is both inevitable and in the end, less than useless, as you say; but also a colossal bother and as Cleese would say, "A waste of space." That which is unknown by way of censorship will be "shouted from the housetops"--so said Jesus.
ReplyDeleteBut I am going to bet that you and Gene did some very active censorship in your house when the girls were smaller; and such habits die hard in spite of our ever-hardy lust-life. Then come the grandchildren and the "Hippie Hollow" posters come down, eh?