Throughout history, censorship of inquiry, speech, and writing was the norm in institutions private, religious, political, and academic; it was, of course, deeply oppressive to the development of civilization. Many of the events are infamous and yet they represent only a tiny fraction of such tragedies. Consider Anaxagoras, Socrates, and Aristarchus among the ancients; the Inquisition, Giordano Bruno, and the Index of Forbidden Books in the Catholic Church; the constant harassment of Jean le Rond D'Alembert, Voltaire, and the other Encyclopedists of eighteenth-century France. Although revolutionary cultural changes have weakened the existence and strength of censorship in many democracies, today there remains lively discussion of the appropriateness of persistent institutionalized censorship -- consider, for example, the current U.S. prohibition of publishing photographs of American soldiers killed in war.
However, the focus on explicit institutionalized censorship may be misplaced. What was accomplished through censorship by authorities in centuries past is achieved far more effectively today when the minds of individuals are trained to believe that it is ignoble to change one's mind, or that it is arrogant or disrespectful to question the tenets of one's parents, teachers, country, or faith. There is no need to ban books when individuals themselves habitually avoid books that seem, at first glance, contrary to their preferred ideas; or if they disdainfully slam shut the book that seems contrary to their preferred notions; or if they read only their own scripture and not that of other faiths; or if they subscribe preferentially to those political periodicals and websites that tend to argue the side of an issue that one already believes. If I am a political liberal, I probably don't subscribe to conservative magazines, and vice versa. When we pick up our mail at the end of a busy day, we don't care to be challenged. We enjoy reaching into the mailbox and pulling out reassurance, validation, affirmation. We may pick our friends, our books, and our radio stations in the same way. So, consciously or subconsciously, we self-censor, we ban contrary facts and perspectives. And we don't learn much -- and we don't stray. Institutions no longer need a thumbscrew or an iron maiden when a sense of lagging certainty, or a sad look of crushed disappointment from a mother or quiet alienation from former friends is enough to convince a person to drop the discussion or to set aside the unorthodox book. If we confuse uncertainty with weakness, or confuse our love and respect for family, friends, country, and faith with our agreement with them, then we do to ourselves what the pyre could not.
Young people are often carefully and explicitly taught to defend against new ideas. The lesson, reinforced and reiterated in a variety of forms over time, usually amounts to something similar to this:
The world is full of persons with ideas different from ours. Whether they are in innocent error or have malicious intent, they will try to pull you away from our true teachings. Be on guard. Good and noble persons, of course, will avoid the people and experiences that carry those corrupting ideas. Yet, in a culture saturated with the ignorance, error, and deceit of others, to have some such encounters is ultimately inevitable. Thus, you must be at the ready, sharp with alertness, as the vigilant guard who stands alone facing into the darkness, watching and listening for the first sign of offense. The ideas may be delivered by a seemingly ordinary, decent, and fair-minded person; the ideas may be crafted to sound measured and reasonable. Do not be deceived -- when you feel such a scorpion on your neck, strike it away and instantly crush it.
If you do not do so, you will be lost in uncertainty and doubt... the corruption will advance gradually from one issue to the next, ever closer to our core tenets. At some indistinguishable point, you will have so transformed that you will be, in fact, no longer one of us; you will then feel the loneliness of your choice, the loss of the community and the righteousness that we offered you.
But this does not have to be. Choose only those associations and experiences that will support and reinforce our ideas; zealously prohibit the corrupting ideas from being heard; if heard, from being considered; if considered, from being influential. Use more skillfully than the deceivers all arts of pleasantry, reason, rhetoric, skepticism, blind faith, politics, and rage to exclude these ideas from your heart and mind. If you do not do this, if you allow yourself to feel the slightest inkling of sympathy for the idea, then you are feeling the lovely sensation of the venom entering your vein.
For each individual to be willingly inoculated against change is the ultimate victory of censorship; the person has been trained to be his or her own severe and ever-present censor.
"The worst things are those that are novelties, every novelty is an innovation, every innovation is an error, and every error leads to Hell-fire."
--Attributed to the prophet Mohammed by Bernard Lewis, Emergence of Modern Turkey
The Scholastics are defined by their unique variation of this self-censorship, which allows alternative ideas a little sport. The Scholastics tolerate and even encourage investigation of alternative and even heretical ideas, so long as in the end, conclusions accord with given doctrine. Considering themselves fair and open-minded, they engage in discussions, take classes, and read books that they know are contrary to their cherished ideas. They may even indulge in a little pride for their tolerance, forbearance, and cosmopolitan interests. But from the beginning, there is a determination to never change one's mind, no matter what the weight of evidence discovered. Ideas are considered out of curiosity, amusement, or "to better know the enemy." They value such excursions, knowing "they will only make me stronger in my belief." There is no genuine unbiased assessment of the relative strengths and weakness of competing ideas. No degree of evidence or argument shall ever rise to the level necessary to change the mind, for that level is always reset higher than the evidence before it. Scholastics fancy themselves great adventurers, but come nightfall they always return home to sleep in the beds made for them, as trained. I imagine a quiet suburban neighborhood, a warm cozy bed upstairs, with a little nightlight nearby: the sign overhead reads "orthodox liberal."
Each of us could use a little introspection as to whether we censor ourselves. Do we go out of our way to maintain a steady diet of reading and friends that will challenge our opinions, even if our first reaction is annoyance? Do we view them with the same level of tolerance or skepticism that we would view the reading and friends who concur with our current opinion? Can we do it with a genuine openness to the possible validity of the argument? Ultimately, how often does it occur that we change our minds on a fundamental issue? -- or is that what we expect only from other people but not from ourselves?