The Book Ban Culture

on Sep 24, 2022

The trend to ban books has recently caught fire and has changed the way we consume literature today. In today’s woke culture, every word we speak, every statement we make, or every side we choose is scrutinized and politicized to the point that the main objective of the stance is lost along the way. It is even worse for the writers who carefully craft their works to have several different meanings and agendas as their face value takes them. Excerpts are chosen without context to light the social media feud that ends upon dawning the crowd justice upon people who just got caught in a misunderstanding, which in any time before, wouldn’t even be registered but now somehow becomes an international scandal that ends with book bans and further ostracization of the author. In a world where mob voices are heard far clearer and louder than well-researched arguments of an informant, even the most basic takes on a reality of our world are turned into blasphemy and capitalized until it has reached its intended emotion: RAGE.

If we take the current state of the Art, then it would seem almost obvious that there is an attack on our free speech as thinkers and writers, and if we don’t stop the current trend, then our society will be worse off, and less liberty will be propagated for all. However, we cannot just drive a line in the sand here and call all free speech just and no matter how marring, still a part of our discourse on free speech. We cannot let our opinions turn fascistic when we choose absolutes in this argument, as all sides are equally essential and free to use as proponents of free speech. Nobody would come out and say that the books written by the Taliban or ISIS should be accessible to our children. But on the other hand, we cannot stop people from feeling offended over the writings of Salman Rushdie or Richard Dawkins.

The truth is that we live in times where different cultures and values are bleeding into one another, and the most emotional of us are roaring on both sides, pushing the moderates to choose a side without even realizing how anti-free speech that is. The attitude that says if you aren’t with us, then you’re against us is why this chaos in our morality has caused this storm. Some books should not be written, and some should be banned from the get-go, but how can we decide which ones are fine and which are just too much?

The first principle about art is that it has no restrictions, pays no tribute to morality, and is just another reflection of our thoughts and feelings as a species. Every single one of them is just as important as the other. Even though our society naturally selects the ideas that reign on top, the rest never stop fighting underneath. If you chose logic over emotions, you would never ban books that provoke thoughts, even stupidly. Still, you would be against religious or traditional indoctrination that forces our children to become absolutists and view everything from a similar lens. But if you choose emotions, you will ban every book that opposes your specific type of thinking, and we can all see how myopic that kind of view is.

But this canceled culture is not emerging from religious countries or those ruled by science and logic. This culture has emerged as an amalgamation of all our cultures and the internet forums