Most Harmful Books

[psocoptera]

You cannot buy advertising like this! A bunch of conservatives have helpfully figured out the Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries so that we can make sure we've read them all. Actually I'm kind of disappointed in myself for how few of these I've read. But anyways, it's kind of interesting to see who makes the "most dangerous authors" list : Marx, Hitler, Mao, *Kinsey*? Because of course being a pervy sex researcher is right up there with the slaughter of millions!

1. The Communist Manifesto
Authors: Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Publication date: 1848

2. Mein Kampf
Author: Adolf Hitler
Publication date: 1925-26

3. Quotations from Chairman Mao
Author: Mao Zedong
Publication date: 1966

4. The Kinsey Report
Author: Alfred Kinsey
Publication date: 1948

5. Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Publication date: 1916

6. Das Kapital
Author: Karl Marx
Publication date: 1867-1894

7. The Feminine Mystique
Author: Betty Friedan
Publication date: 1963

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy
Author: Auguste Comte
Publication date: 1830-1842

9. Beyond Good and Evil
Author: Freidrich Nietzsche
Publication date: 1886

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
Author: John Maynard Keynes
Publication date: 1936


Honorable Mention

The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich
What Is To Be Done by V.I. Lenin
Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno
On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
Beyond Freedom and Dignity by B.F. Skinner
Reflections on Violence by Georges Sorel
The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly
Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead
Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader
Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
The Greening of America by Charles Reich
The Limits to Growth by Club of Rome
Descent of Man by Charles Darwin


Some of these I haven't even heard of (who's Sorel, or Croly, or Reich?), but I'm totally now picturing a big cocktail party (possibly in the afterlife) where people are bickering over whether, no no, *their* book was *totally* more threatening.

But seriously, I'm very tempted to take this as a personal non-fiction reading list for the next ten years. Or maybe organize a book club. I don't think I could stomach Mein Kampf but the Communist Manifesto and Feminine Mystique were both pretty engaging as I recall - a good balance of things to agree and disagree with - so that speaks well for the rest of the list.

Comments

[creed-of-hubris.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was kinda baffled at that showing up as well.

But honestly, if these guys are criticizing *Darwin* and *Kinsey*, it makes a lot of sense: obviously these are benighted theocons, who do believe that women should be in the kitchen, barefoot, and pregnant (and not taking anesthetic during childbirth, since god gave eve labor pains as a result of original sin.)

[carnap.livejournal.com]

Kinsey's report is hardly a sterling example of high-quality science. Believing that the report was dangerous isn't about opposing science; it's about believing that it contributed to the ideological justification of the sexual revolution (yes) and that the sexual revolution was a Very Bad Thing.

Getting into the "honorable mentions" category only indicates that two of their poll subjects gave it a nonzero badness ranking, so the presence of Darwin doesn't mean as much.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I definitely think bad science can be harmful, but I agree that Kinsey isn't on the list for sloppy research practices or biases in his findings, they'd be condemning it just as much if it was done perfectly, so long as the findings were similar.

The list is actually kind of interesting as a tool for getting me to think about what sort of intellectual errors I hold people responsible for... I mean, sloppiness and bias seems like Bad Science in a way that plain old being wrong does not. Lots of people have to be wrong usually, in the process of figuring things out. But what are the actual factors leading me to feel like Keynes made good-faith errors while Mao was immoral? Just that Mao was also criminal? Possibly I should actually *read* Keynes (or Kinsey) before having opinions about this...

[carnap.livejournal.com]

The first criterion that jumps to mind is something like "degree of obvious immorality." I don't know what Mao said, but that murdering people en masse is evil is (or should be) obvious enough that advocating it is presumptively immoral.

Another criterion is motive. Mao was trying to increase his personal power. Keynes was making a good-faith effort to contribute to economic theory, and can be accused of being a power-grabber only insofar as he probably wanted to see his ideas implemented.

I would also hold people responsible for intellectual errors that are obviously rationalizations aimed at making the facts conform to preconceived value judgments ("X is the right thing to do; therefore, the consequences of doing X are, on balance, good" is a tempting but invalid line of reasoning). Likewise with "If Y were true, it would mean that doing good thing Y is essentially impossible; therefore X is false." These are not to be condemned as strongly as the examples in the previous paragraphs, since they are easy to fall into without realizing it, but they are still intellectual failings different from just being wrong.

A good example of the kind of thing I'm talking about would be "Public policy X is a morally required (or prohibited) policy; therefore the constitution mandates (or prohibits) X." People never phrase the argument in those terms, but it's clear most constitutional reasoning, especially by legal scholars, whether liberal or consertvative, is a form of it. Another would be "single-payer, government-run health insurance would be morally good if it worked; therefore it must work." The reverse would be "socialized medicine would be bad for freedom; therefore it must also be bad for health." The positive economics should come before the normative conclusion, but too often it comes first, and that's a moral failing as well as an intellectual one.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Let's quit speaking so neutrally here -- it's pretty obvious that Kinsey made the mistakes he did at least partly because he, personally, got fascinated by how many kinds of sex there were out there and wanted to promote their existence, often without regard for the potential damage to people's lives should his sometimes painfully bad science prove wrong. For one thing, Kinsey's questionable conclusions regarding children's sexual maturity and capacity for feeling sexual pleasure gave organizations like NAMBLA a lot of rhetorical ammo, something that I think most lefties and righties can agree was a bad thing.

Just because Kinsey was a scientific researcher doesn't clear him of having a bias in his own work. I don't absolve Tim Leary's role in getting kids into high-power hallucinogens either.

[carnap.livejournal.com]

I know very little about Kinsey, so I can't much comment further. But I agree with psocoptera that he'd be equally as condemned had his research been impeccable.