Okay so by now I’m sure you’ve all heard and discussed ad nauseam and perhaps even lamented (or maybe not cared about) the edits done to Roald Dahl’s works recently.
It may or may not surprise you to know that I was a bit ambivalent about the news.
Authors can edit after the fact if they choose to. Indeed Dahl is no stranger to edits even. But that was moreso a “translation” issue (Oompa Loompas.)
And if this was just the estate doing their thing, then I mean that’s just how the book biz works
But I’m also of the opinion that books, much like history, need to remain intact. It makes for good classroom discussion about what was acceptable then vs now (we even did that in my primary school English class!)
Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, as they say
And it’s art. It might not be art everyone likes or even agrees with. But I think it’s art nonetheless.
And whilst I’m fine with editing for world audiences, these recent edits don’t seem to do anything but change the works. Albeit slightly.
Good intentions gone badly maybe?
So I’m a little in the air about it?
I dunno. I recognise that this phenomenon is probably just publishers adapting to modern audiences. Which is inevitable really.
But I’m also a little put off by edits done to dead author’s works. Because with Dahl at least, the appeal with him was him being not being “polite” in the first place
But what do you guys think?
What edits have you seen done?
Seen any funny ones?
Taboo and prohibition can create temptation, and can cause an increase in sales, especially for the original taboo version. Adam and Eve did not even think about the tree of knowledge, until it was pointed out in a taboo. Then it makes one curious. I have never heard of that author; since I don't read that much. I am a writer more than a reader. I will read more here. But now I am curious, why this particular work, pushes so many emotional buttons.
Putting taboo led marketing aside; tabloid feuding, if one cannot control their emotions, you are more likely to accept censorship as a way to avoid your emotional compulsions. The Left has pushed for teaching emotional thinking, knowing quite well this can be used to get people on board, with self serving Pavlov style emotional censorship; make it stop or I will melt.
If you could learn to shut off your emotions, so the same taboo stimulus, has less of an impact on you, you can handle more stimulus and stay more objective to the impact of all original art. You will not melt, but can learn how life once was. One will learn that human nature is timeless, allowing you to see when human nature is being perverted.
Our human brain stores memory using sensory content and emotional tags. It is a two step write process. This two step process allow us to access our memory from either way. I can induce a feeling of nostalgia and a memory may appear. Or I can think of a past time, watching an old movie, and those old feelings can reappear. Both sides of the brain are used.
The sensory content of our memory has endless variety, due to up to five senses in unique places in time and space. The emotions, on the other hand, are limited to a relatively small set. The result is our emotional tags are recycled, and each are used for many similar memories. If I asked you to list all your favorite foods, all these memories will feel the same in terms of enjoyment and satisfaction. Yet they can be as quite varied in sensory content, such as all the top ethnic foods. One emotional tag can be used for many things.
The practical problem with emotional thinking, is certain emotions; due to recycle, can bring up a wide variety of similar sensory content. This can confuse one in terms of what the emotional feeling is actually connected to, while amplifying the emotion due to the overlap of many emotionally similar tagged memories.
Rational thinking approaches memory from the other side; uniqueness of the sensory side. We may think of one particular dish we like, that could induce the same feeling as the other 25 dishes. But since emotional is secondary, we can stay focused. There is less amplification and less ambiguity from this side of memory. Teaching one to think with emotions was a recipe for confusion and even sensory overload, which then makes censorship seem like a healthy alternative; shut off further stimulus. We need to train you back toward less emotion and less ambiguous confusion.
The Russian Collusion Coup, for example, made the emotional thinkers of the Left, see Trump as threatening; add a fear tag when you think of him. There are all types of other things we fear and/or learn to associate with fear, like world war, global warming, nuclear war, Hitler, black cats, your mother's or father's wrath, to name a few.
The emotional thinker is more likely to induce range of fear attached memories; consciously and unconsciously, via reinforcement of the Trump fear. The rest help with amplification and the unconscious ambiguity; Trump=a black cat called Hitler. Now you can be led down the path of further unconsciousness; stronger amplified feelings, that can disable your will to think and chose; ability to shift toward the sensory side. Bad words or taboo imagery does not amplify in the rational thinker so they can enjoy and not melt or explode with limbic resonance.
Emotions are good and are needed to write to memory, but it is more advanced for one to think sensory first, while not ignoring the feelings that are attached, or even how they might trigger amplification. The cure is to think specific content as separate and not assume any one memory, is composed of all memories with the same tag; ambiguity.
