Religion is a Mental Illness

Franklin Roosevelt once famously said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” –which begs the question, what about Siberian Tigers? Or nuclear weapons? Or drunk drivers?But after one gets such sarcastic rejoinders out of one’s system, one has to acknowledge the point he was making. Fear is itself a dangerous thing. And when fear takes over a person, a community, a country, or a publishing world, bad things can happen.

And fear has indeed taken over the American publishing world – fear of social media firestorms, fear of career loss, fear of corporate financial loss, fear of being branded “racist” or some other negative label, fear of being hated, fear of being shunned. This fear has fostered major changes, none of them positive, in how books get made and received.

While the people who’ve foisted these changes defend them as “progress,” changes rooted in fear cannot possibly be progressive. Fear, especially of social media blowback, has prompted publishers to enforce the draconian “Own Voices” rule, a racist and pseudo-Marxist mandate which says that the author’s “identity” must match the subject matter – and that, specifically, authors from the “empowered” group must not be allowed to “appropriate” material from the “marginalized” group. Neither tribalism nor segregation are good for society, nor are they good for literature. A publishing rule codifying tribalism and segregation spells death to literary freedom, imagination, empathy, and any literary form other than memoir. It does not, in any way, represent “progress.” Artistic subject matter is not property, and attempts to establish it as such are beyond reactionary – they’re counter to the human spirit and to the very motivation for making art, a motivation which is by its boundless nature personal and fearless

Fear has also prompted publishers to avoid authors who express dissenting opinions, authors who dare to speak out against the oppressive straightjacket of Own Voices, for instance, or against what John McWhorter rightly calls the “woke racism” inherent in how the privileged leftwing white people running the publishing companies now signal their virtue – a kind of racism on full display in the movie “American Fiction,” which satirizes this culture mercilessly.

Fear has prompted publishers to avoid taking chances on any potentially controversial books. This is a major departure. Since books were first published, publishers took chances on books that might offend certain people, and often these books have helped move literature forward and at the very least expanded the notion of what is possible in a book.

Perhaps most alarmingly and insidiously, though, fear has prompted publishers into adhering to the oppressive notion that books must first and foremost promote societal progress – or what counts as societal progress to a powerful minority. Fear of the social media mob has sent most publishers on a juggernaut to publish books which abide by the ideological principles set forth by that small but vocal faction of the Left now called “woke” by pretty much everyone except for members of that faction. The idea that books primarily exist to promote a moral agenda, as determined by those in power, is the same suffocating anti-literary dogma adhered to by totalitarian states, most famously the Soviet Union under Stalin

None of this bodes well for the future of literature in America. But wait – there’s more: At this very moment, somewhere someone is going through some work of adult or children’s literature and removing all the naughty bits – or, as the censors call their noble line of work, “updating” these books, removing words that might possibly offend the delicate sensibilities of today’s fragile readers, removing passages that could cause what the censors call “harm.” It’s already happened to Roald Dahl and others. Who’s next?

Meanwhile, the National Council of Teachers of English and School Library Journal joined forces in 2022 to “refresh the canon” – making a new recommended summer reading list and “deselecting” certain classics from this list by dead white authors, such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and The Complete Works of Williams Shakespeare.

This all sounds as if it could be taken straight from a mid-20th>-century dystopian novel such as Fahrenheit 451 or 1984. But it’s simply the reality of our current world. Where are the voices of outrage? Which is to say, where are the sincere voices of those who love and respect all good literature? Yes, there are those who complain loudly and bitterly about the dystopian reality of the publishing world – mostly the cynical rightwing Fox News pundits trying to score political points and rile up their base so as to win elections, while wholeheartedly supporting rightwing book bans. But where is the outrage from authors, editors, liberals, and others who, unlike the cynical rightwing critics of wokeness, truly value freedom of speech? Fear is what holds liberals and book-lovers back from speaking out against any of this tyrannical garbage. Next question: Is this fear truly warranted?

Would it actually take courage to overcome this paralyzing fear? Or is the situation more like the one in Bunuel’s “The Exterminating Angel,” in which the dinner party guests are trapped, unable to leave the party, solely due to a lack of will power? I tend to believe it’s mostly the latter. Yes, people are scared. But what they are scared of is miniscule compared with truly scary things that people deal with all the time – serious health problems, the fact guns outnumber people in America, bad drivers, you know, things that are life-threatening.

Editors believe they will be risking financial and reputational ruin if they publish a particular book or author that is “problematic.” In giving in to this unreasonable fear, they have handed over the reins of power to the social media bullies. There is nothing physically or otherwise stopping the editors from ignoring the bullies altogether, letting the social media firestorms play out, letting the lunatic fringe set their own heads on fire through sheer outrage, and then just quietly publishing whatever they themselves, thinking for themselves, believe is worthy of publication. This is how publishing used to work. There’s no reason why it can’t again – except for fear.

Courage is what Alexei Navalny displayed through his heroic tenure as the leading voice of resistance to the world’s most effective and resilient tyrant, Vladimir Putin. This courage cost him his life. For Christ’s sake, ignoring woke nonsense on social media does not take courage. It just takes a little integrity – and the willingness to think for oneself.