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Mini: Burning Books · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to why we do what we do? Welcome to why we do
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  what we do? Mini. I am your host Abraham, and I'm your
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  Shane. Well I listen, I'm doing the thing where it's less words,
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  right, so it's mini. So instead of yeah, now now I've added
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  more words, it totally defeated the purpose. Okay, anyway, so this
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  is this is our mini We tackle short topic or small topics or topics and
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  some capacity, and we talk about them really quickly and let's jump into it.
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  Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it, all right, Shane,
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  I know you love to read. Do you ever look at your books
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  and think that would probably make for really good fuel for a fire? There
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  was one book I did have that I thought that, But then I then
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  I decided that that was not a thing I was going to do because I
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  don't believe in that. Even though I strongly disagree with Jordan Peterson, Yeah,
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  I feel the same, I mean either. However, the history and
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  inventions of books is really fascinating, Like it's really cool to talk about that.
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  But that is definitely way beyond the scope of a mini conversation that we
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  are planning to have today. Suffice it to say that books gave humans a
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  way to essentially offload and storm memories recorded events, to expand our knowledge at
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  an absolutely unprecedented rate, and also to preserve and spread culture. Yes,
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  it's really a wonderful invention. Now, as long as people have had the
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  technology of proliferating knowledge and stories through books, other people have been setting those
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  books on fire. And those people are not great people, generally speaking,
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  for sure, generally speaking, of course. All right, so let's just
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  talk through what's going on here. Pretty much, bookburning is what it sounds
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  like. It's setting books on fire, right now. Sometimes this has been
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  done symbolically, but at least historically, the purpose of bookburning was to actively
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  eliminate the knowledge contained in that book, so it could not be easily spread
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  because it was no longer recorded. Yeah. So in two thirteen BC,
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  the terra Cotta Emperor of China kin chi Huang, ordered a giant pile of
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  books to be burned, Which is that sounds so sad. Yeah, there
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  was a lot of like anything that didn't prop up the propaganda of the government
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  of the kingdom and whatnot. Roman rulers burned books with unfavorable predictions about the
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  future sometimes or books that contained foreign cultures and traditions, because they were trying
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  to take over the entire world as one of the people who had that ambition.
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  Yep. But one thing to point out, and we'll get to this
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  in a moment, But part of the reason this was so impactful is because
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  making a book in the first place back at these times was really difficult.
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  So there was often a single copy of a text that they ever existed,
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  yes, or maybe like a handful, like a couple of copies, because
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  they were doing it by hand. Even when they had some kind of mechanical
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  devices to help reproduce those, they were very unreliable and mostly they couldn't.
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  They could at best rely on ways of transferring ink to a second piece of
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  paper. But they were still copying by hand, so you might be able
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  to get two books at the effort of one not reliably and inconsistently used.
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  So one single book that was produced, if that was burned, then everything
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  contained in it was just permanently lost. Yep. Absolutely. Armies would frequently
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  target libraries and books when conquering territories and would burn books in art of the
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  invaded territory. A lot of times your religious texts, specifically about about the
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  culture itself, because they were an invading army expanding an empire. Famous example
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  of this, the Library at Alexandria was at the time most likely the most
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  comprehensive library in the world, with the largest assembly of human knowledge on the
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  planet by like an enormous degree, and thus it was targeted and burned down
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  multiple times. It actually was the subject of many fires, but the largest,
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  most well known example of burning down the Library at Alexandria was when Caesar
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  burned down the library more comprehensively destroyed and estimated seven hundred thousand or more texts
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  containing knowledge of math, philosophy, architecture, and many other things. And
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  people wonder why Brutus stabbed him, you know, That's what it was.
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  It was like, my favorite book was in there, my favorite book,
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  I love Goosebumps. Yeah, assuming that erl Stein existed back then. Now,
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  the invention of the printing press in fourteen forty resulted in an unprecedented mass
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  production of books that proliferated access to books so successfully that eliminating in a text
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  entirely became all but impossible. So it's very difficult to get rid of a
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  text now because so many were able to be mass produced. Yeah, many,
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  many, many copies. In eighteen fourteen, the British burned down the
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  US Library of Congress, destroying at least three thousand volumes. Apparently in response
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  to this, one of the politicians whose name I'm forgetting it was like one
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  of the big ones, like Andrew Jackson or something. I don't know,
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  but they donated a huge chunk of their own personal book library to help rebuild
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  the library of common aggress afterward. Oh that's nice. Now, during World
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  War Two, not the specifically targeted literature in art as part of their campaign
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  of destruction while claiming to be the victims of the Jews, which was a
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  common strategy, claiming to be the victim while being the aggressor. That happens
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  a lot in dictatorships and in totalitarian types of spaces, and so that you
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  eliminate marginalized groups of people by starting with their culture, their texts, their
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  important knowledge and information, and you keep the masses less educated. Yeah,
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  very commonly. That's actually a tactic in the more recent Russian Ukrainian War of
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  Russia who is invading, shelling firing upon and started the entire campaign. Who
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  is then claiming to be the victim. Yeah, it depends, like you
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  know, where they're at in the system, But that is definitely a very
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  common strategy of while you're aggressing, claiming to be the victim. Yeah.
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  Yeah, A really famous example in nineteen thirty three, the German student union
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  there's students now, they organized a book burning of anything considered un German,
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  including anything that dealt with liberalism, communism. If they were written by people
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  who are believed to be enemies of Nazism or some way undesirable to Nazis,
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  then they would burn their book, regardless of what the content was. Yeah,
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  it's so sad. Now, when Malzadong rose to power in China,
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  you order the burning of any books that didn't support the Chinese propaganda that was
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  being perpetuated at the time. So again it's you see in these examples of
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  places where you know a government or somebody in power is trying to control the
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  narrative. Doesn't sound familiar at all as somebody who lives in Florida. Indeed,
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  Yeah, something that does not go away. And we'll actually get to
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  a little bit. In twenty twelve, al Qaeda Islamic extremists invaded Mali in
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  Timbuktu and targeted priceless texts and ray manuscripts. Fortunately, there were some heroes
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  who put themselves a great personal risk and risk their lives and they were able
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  to save over three hundred and fifty thousand manuscripts. So they were really incredible
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  in their efforts. Yeah. In twenty twenty one, in the US state
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  of Virginia, two conservative representatives, Robbie abuis Mail and Kirk Twigg, openly
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  advocated for burning books to contain any language about sexuality, particularly if they referred
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  to LBGTQ plus sexuality at all. They actually were another one of these claiming
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  to be the victims because they were stating that these books were essentially perverted hyper
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  sexualization that was trying to influence the sexuality of their students. They weren't.
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  Most of them simply contain characters who were a part of the LGBT community,
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  right, And so they are just openly advocating for book burning is a thing,
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  that's a bad. Yeah. So they're just biggots, is what we
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  should say. They're bigots. Yeah, they're bigots, all right. Important
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  thing though, when we get to any one of these discussions is but why
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  though? Yeah, but why though? So some people who were stranded somewhere
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  probably burn books as fuel to stay warm or to cook food when they were
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  desperate. We're not talking about them right now, because they had their own
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  struggles and that's a unique context. Yeah. Some graduating high school students might
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  burn like textbooks to celebrate the end of the semester. We're also not talking
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  about them. Yeah. Many have long understood that the history is in the
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  hands of people who record the history, and so when told by the victors,
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  the victors are glorified and the conquered are either vilified or erased altogether.
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  Right, So, before books were widely available and literacy was normal, burning
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  a book could essentially permanently end dissemination of any information contained in that book.
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  Yeah, I mean, it's essentially the end of a culture, is what
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  happens now. Once books were ubiquitous, book burnings became largely political or symbolic
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  more than anything. However, books with relatively limited pressings can still be completely
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  eliminated, and have, and many have tried in those spaces. However,
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  even without trying to completely eliminate a book, book burning might effectively remove the
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  availability of that text from the immediate geographical region. So even if it doesn't
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  get rid of it entirely, it gets rid of it in that community,
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  and that might be enough for the oppressors. Exactly. Many of these books
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  burnings were intended to control public thought and discourse by reducing access to ideas that
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  differed from the propaganda of the people who were in power. So they're again
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  just trying to control the narrative and get people to believe them and think what
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  they think. And this is true for religious institutions too. They have been
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  pretty favorable of destroying books. And when I say pretty favorable, I mean
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  very favorable of destroying books to prevent the spread of other religions or content deemed
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  inappropriate to the religion. And that's how you have like the Gnostic books and
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  the Dead Sea Scrolls and all that they were like attempted to be destroyed,
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  but they are considered quote unquote like extensions of the Bible. And that's why
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  you have the story of the midwife who accidentally touched Mary's vagina and then her
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  hand burned off, but then touched Jesus the baby, and then her hand
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  grew back. That is a story that was at one point in time in
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  the Bible and is no longer in the Bible because that was just too much.
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  Wow. But the dragons are there. Still, there's still dragons there.
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  They also love burning books the religious groups. I love burning books that
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  question the church, ask questions that the church couldn't answer, or spread ideas
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  that were opposed to religious theology see Galileo Galilei exactly those things that were deemed
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  threatening. Yes. Another place with this commonly occurs is with fascist dictators.
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  They like to burn books to commit what they call cultural genocide, which was
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  the goal of Hitler, but also just to squash any dissenting ideas about their
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  political ideologies. Anything that does not glorify their position is usually considered a threat
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  and is therefore eliminated in the form of burning, which again may only remove
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  it from that region. But if they can also control other flows of information
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  such as the Internet and what types of things are allowed to exist in their
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  region, and they control the media, for example, there's only state run
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  TV, and they have policies that prevent other ideas from getting out there,
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  then it's very easy for them to control the narrative, yep. Absolutely,
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  So many book burners call themselves the victims, even when they are the aggressors,
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  and out number of the victims. As we mentioned before a lot of
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  times, the cause of the book burning is because of some attack on their
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  way of life. The truth is is it's just they just don't like it
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  and they want to get rid of it. So there's no such thing as
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  an attack on the traditional American family. Just it's a book that exists and
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  it's perfectly fine and it's doing no harm. Now, on the flip side
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  of this, because there is always a double side, and it's a little
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  beyond the scope of what we intended to talk about today, I think it's
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  a conversation for a future time. But what about those people who use books
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  to deliberately spread misinformation, lies, and those sorts of problems, And so
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  we've got I think there's a sort of two way street here to think about.
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  Like, on the one hand, I think burning books is generally a
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  bad idea. On the other, like, at what point does the dissemination
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  of information that is actively leading to the destruction of our society, our democracy,
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  our country, that is actively causing harm and people are getting hurt because
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  of it. At what point does that make sense for someone to step in
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  and say, like, look, we have to draw a line somewhere.
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  Yeah, maybe that doesn't exist, Maybe there is no line. And I
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  think that's the libertarian view, is like there should just be more or speech,
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  although I think you can counter by pointing out that, well, everything's
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  completely siloed, so the more the speech doesn't go anywhere, Like you could
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  put out all the speech in the in the universe that you possibly could,
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  and it still will not affect those people who are being manipulated. Right Anyway,
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  bigger conversation not what we're going to talk about. I think, yeah,
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  most of the time, if you're burning books, you're probably a fascist
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  piece of I agree with that sentiment. Anything emoicon here, Shane, Nope,
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  I think that covers it. I mean, I think book burning sucks.
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  I think book banning sucks. As somebody who like I had historically had
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  iron Rand books, which I have grown away from that obviously, and then
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  you know Jordan Peterson books that I had gotten I'd been gifted, like I
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  felt bad donating them because I didn't want anybody else to get them, but
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  I still have them. I won't destroy them, yeah, but you know,
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  I definitely won't give them away either. That's fair. Books are knowledge.
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  I think we can't necessarily use the same playbook as the people who are
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  oppressers. So yep, exactly, another strategy is needed. Well, I
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  think that will leave you without. This is Abraham, This is a shame.
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  Why we do what we do? Mini is out. See. Yup,
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  you've been listening to Why We Do What We Do. You can learn
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  more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks
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  for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.