Chief Thoughts #006: Do Not Destroy His-Story

My latest Chief Thoughts is about not destroying history and one way history has been destroyed is by burning books. There is nothing more insidious, in my estimation than burning a book. Other crimes against humanity notwithstanding but what burning books represent is a complete obliteration of possible knowledge gained. Throughout history there have been many notable book burnings, arguably the most infamous book-burning was in 1933 Germany where many students burned thousands of books written by Jewish authors but there have been many many more notable destructions of words. 

The reason why the Germans burned books in a burgeoning Nazi-led society goes without saying but hate is not the most prominent reason books are burned, well I guess the hate of opposing views or possible influential information, but the most prominent reason is the influence that words can have over a person and the book burners want to make that influence impossible.

For example, the great poet Publius Ovid Naso (Ovid) was exiled from Rome for his work Ars Amatoria, which was said to go against the moral framework that Augustus was attempting to graft onto Roman society at the time. Although most of Ovid's works still survive up until this day similarly to the Bible, his works have been translated many times and many parts of Ars Amatoria have been lost due to censorship by extreme editing. 

Roman emperor Caligula banned Homer's The Odyssey because he did not want Roman society influenced by the ideals of freedom propagated by the Ancient Greek writers. And one of the most egregious book burnings was caliph Omar who supposedly burned down the library of Alexandria in Kemet. Alexander the Macedonian, for all his faults, loved the Ancient Greek writers. Although the event is disputed caliph Omar supposedly said about the burnings, “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the Book of God they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.” It was said that in burning the books, the caliph provided fuel to warm the city’s bathhouses. Caligula and caliph Omar seemed to me to be burning the books for the sexual degeneracy they wanted to rule their societies because they understand there is no bigger distraction than sex for society, but that is something to speculate about another time. 

The Roman Catholic Church kept the Bible out of the hands of the people for centuries and many rulers have burned the Bible and made it a crime to possess it (that time is here again!). Book burnings represent the destruction not only of information but also a destruction of history. It is not our duty to do what those in power do and limit or hide information because of the dangers it could possibly pose. We must be a very informed population to be able to challenge those in power. Words are so powerful that even the possibility of their influence must be smothered. We must embrace the possibility of words, it has always been our salvation and the "elite" have always known that.

I have burned books before. Check out a video I did years ago to promote my third work and second book of poetry Universe Unraveling.