The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #103280   Message #2108339
Posted By: Little Hawk
21-Jul-07 - 05:45 PM
Thread Name: Tintin In The Congo
Subject: RE: Tintin In The Congo
I agree with Q above.

I see no reason to censor reading material from a previous social age because it does not suit present sensibilities. Censoring such things, in fact, prevents present day people from getting any chance to see historical things they don't agree with now, and on that basis, prevents them from really knowing what the hell it is that they are supposed to be against, since they are effectively ignorant regarding it.

The same goes for children. You do not protect children by making them ignorant of the past, and of how people in the past were expressing themselves. You give children a chance to learn something by giving them a chance to use their own intelligence, and compare the past to the present.

I don't even like Tintin books. I find them frankly annoying for various reasons. But I see no sense in banning them, nor do I see any sense in banning or censoring anything else like that which was first printed a long time ago. Knowing the way people thought at one time is better than not knowing, I figure, and how can you know how they thought if you don't LOOK at the stuff they had to say at the time?

Those who continually censor the past will in the process become so ignorant of it that they have little or no idea of how to detect destructive social trends in the present.

Hitler burned books. You know why? He wanted people to think only along one narrow party line. He wanted to erase their ability to think outside the mental box he was building for them. Present day efforts to censor the literature of the past because it offends some present day sensibilities are equally misguided and totalitarian, in my opinion.