What Do All of These Banned Books Have In Common?
Anyone else notice that we tend to focus on things like sexual undertones, racial issues, or classism, when we imagine why many of these…
Anyone else notice that we tend to focus on things like sexual undertones, racial issues, or classism, when we imagine why many of these books are banned?
I remember believing that for a long time.
I am not so sure anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I think certain themes being taboo at various points in time were definitely the fuel to the fire that riled people up to support banning them.
But I also think there may be ulterior motives here, even if perhaps …..we are collectively unconscious about it. It might not be a fully conscious motive….
Take a look at the books in the image.
What do these books all have in common?
Each one is a critique of superficiality in society.
What’s cute to me — that’s exactly what Ayn Rand’s books are about too.
Only, many of the people who love the books in this image, somehow hate Ayn Rand. She was writing in the context of communism and it’s rhetoric, which impacted her personally.
The irony is that the reason many dislike her so much happens to be the same reason she wrote her books in the first place.
Truly, nationally empowered forms of communism only flourish when everything superficial about ourselves is empowered, elevated, and made the goal of living.
But before you go bonkers dear socialists who made be reading, just know — you can replace Communism with Fundamentalist Religious Dominion, Multinational Corporate Hegemony, or Ideological Racism, and the sentence remains valid. Try it.
It all requires the same dynamic.
ALL. OF. IT.
When we loose ourselves and enter any psychological space where everything is pretense for the sake of peer-validation/approval, the monster that springs to life is the same monster, only animating a different suit of superficial ideas.
We can fight all day about the superficial ideas, and we do, because that eliminates true accountability and a hard look in the mirror.
People tend to ban books that hold up a mirror and give a reflection they cannot stand to look at directly, then we deliberately focus on the superficial parts of it when trying to assign blame.
We look to sex, gender, race, anything to stop us from looking at the real culprit — the GroupMind animal and how we all behave when we allow ourselves to be animated by it.
Call it GroupThink, call it Mob Mentality, call it Cult Phenomena, it matters little.
We become our worst selves when we are posturing for the sake of peer approval. There is nothing remotely “authentic” about it.
Total Inauthenticity and where it leads is the state of being which these authors are warning us about through stories we can connect with.
But, this all may come from some place very natural. While I cannot make any scientific claim as to why this happens, I can look at schools of fish, packs of wolves, flocks of birds, and observe that when fear kicks in, they tend to synchronize and move in unison.
I suspect this state has a very real evolutionary purpose which has now become somewhat anachronistic and antagonistic to the Human Being as an Individual.
What do you think?
Food for thought…..
Thank you for reading!
Until next time….
Onward and Upward Everybody!
-Chris
Automated Income Lifesyle w/ Chris Morton YouTube
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