BONUS | The Craziest Reasons Books Were Banned
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. When people hear about banned books, book banning, book bans, book banning, book bans, banning books, they have this perception of what that is. They think it's going to be violent or grotesque or totally inappropriate, pornographic. They think the controversy is there for a reason, which is what people who are banning books want you to think. But in fact, most of the books that are on the banned or the challenged or the censored lists aren't what you would think at all, which is sort of the point. So I wanted to go through some books that have been banned historically that have been challenged recently that showed just how ridiculous book banning actually is.
okay so calendar of wisdom tolstoy actually thought this was his best book more important than war and peace or any of his novels it was a collection of ancient wisdom spiritual wisdom christianity buddhism confucianism stoicism it was him picking a handful of passages from all the different traditions to meditate on each day now you might not think that that's controversial and it isn't controversial here in america but it was banned by the soviets shortly after it came out and basically lost completely until 1989. Only then was it rediscovered. Now it's become incredibly popular. I read a page of it every day. But for almost a century, that wasn't possible, right? And it was banned by the Soviets because it was religious.
I don't know. That's the point. There's often not a great logic behind why something gets banned. But once it gets banned, it's lost. And it was lost for almost 100 years. We tend to think like books are being banned by the right or books are being banned by the left. But all governments for all time have banned books and they have banned some really important important things that people should read. The 48 Laws of Power. This book is banned in the US federal prison system. A friend of mine works on death penalty cases and he has to tell defendants not to have this book in their cell because it might get used against them in sentencing. Look, this is an unfarnished look at human nature power Robert Greene is taking from
Machiavelli and Sun Tzu and Talleyrand is taking from all these different experts on getting power, maintaining power, protecting yourself against power. So you can see why it might be popular with prisons. This book is also heavily shoplifted. But the point is, some books actually are banned by the federal government. Some books they do make more or less illegal for people to have. But it is precisely the books that people are afraid of that they think are controversial that I would argue we need to read the most. If you're worried about other people using the ideas in this book, well then you should probably read it so you can defend yourself against it. Although I would say all the controversy about this book seems very silly to me.
Robert is not just kind and generous, but he's a person of integrity and decency. This is a book about how the world works, not a book about how the world should work. In 2021, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, who has complained publicly about cancel culture and censorship and all that, canceled an event with the authors of this book because he disagreed with what was in it.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00β4:48
2
What misconception do people have about why books get banned?
4:48β7:43
3
Why was Tolstoyβs Calendar of Wisdom banned by the Soviets?
7:43β11:34
4
Which books have been banned by governments regardless of political side?
11:34β11:42
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Daily Stoic
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