Editor’s note: this is the seventh in a series of summaries based on author and professor of history, Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny”. The goal is to pass on his insights, wisdom and forecast to those who have not read his works.
Be kind to our language
Read Harry Potter
“Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.” Those words may not be “popular” by our daily standards but Snyder feels “Each story on televised new is “breaking” until it is displaced by the next one. So, we are hit by wave upon wave but never see the ocean.” From a different perspective, entertainer David Bowie agreed when he commented in 1999 that “We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying…the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.”
Snyder notes “More than half a century ago, the classic novel of totalitarianism warned of the domination of screens, the suppression of books, the narrowing of vocabularies and the associated difficulties of thought.” He urges us to remember the stories that decry ‘banned books’, including Fahrenheit 451 and Orwell’s 1984.
But…if you don’t think spending an evening or two with the classics sounds entertaining, Snyder points out that “one novel known by millions of young Americans that offers an account of tyranny and resistance is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” His list for suggested reading is voluminous including “the foundational book…in which Jesus preached it “is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”.
Liz Moore, Editor