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Old 06-09-2005, 10:49 AM   #40
octothorp
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My own two cents is that the only time a book is inherently harmful is when it's written as a tool of mass propaganda rather than as an exchange of ideas and discourse, and when questioning of the book is discouraged or punished. Of the above books, only the first three might be taken as a form of propaganda, and only Mao's was used on a mass scale for those purposes. I'd also list the Book of Mormon as another harmful book written in the last two centuries, given that it was intended as a propaganda tool and was used effectively to that end. This isn't getting into the validity of ideas in the book or the motives of its authors, which would spark a huge debate in itself--just the idea of book as mass propaganda.

Of course any book--even those that have been used as propaganda--can be reclaimed and used wisely by critical readers. In today's culture, books are almost synonymous with critical reading: there are very few environments (some church environments, but not all) where books are not read with a critical mind. It's hard for us to imagine an environment where books were sometimes read and absorbed as mindlessly as people now watch TV.
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