How to Weaponize Your Book

When Boris Pasternak wrote Doctor Zhivago, it represented a destabilizing element to Soviet Russia. Which was his point. Soviet Russia was an empire policed by ideology, and so it felt threatened by invasions of opposing ideologies.

Pasternak couldn't get Doctor Zhivago published in Russia. That would have been ridiculous.

He contacted the Western powers.

Which is how the CIA got into the publishing industry. They published Doctor Zhivago and distributed it through clandestine channels into Soviet Russia.

I don't know much else about Pasternak as a person. I do know that he had a story to tell, and he told the hell out of it. I know that he recognized the value of his story, that he knew that to tell his story he put himself at risk. In his case, he was at risk of being sent to a Gulag. We might not all face the same risk, but there are risks in spreading ideas.

If the idea is strong, it can be opposed. If the idea is strong, opposition strengthens it. If an idea will rattle people, that's a reason in favor of spreading it.

Books change the world, because people change the world, and people define themselves by ideas, and books are big ideas.

The most important, and perhaps the only step, in writing a book that might be weaponized is to write that book. If it's a book that will change some minds, then it's a dangerous book. Doesn't matter if it's about fighting dragons or digging holes or a romance in Russia during World War II. Books are dangerous when they're honest.

That is how to weaponize a book.

#lifegoals