Is a world that can be revised at will and knowledge can be erased by those who would rule over you:
The vast treasure trove of information contained on Google, our modern Library of Alexandria, torched by Julius Caesar’s soldiers in 48 BC, is vulnerable not only to some catastrophic event, like an asteroid strike or, potentially worse, a cloistered pimply hacker, but to the manipulations and contraventions of those who seek to rewrite world history.
The greatest threat to man is the ennui and apathy that comes with the belief that there is no great threat. And what threat could be greater than that of the leather-bound, typeface word – painstakingly and somewhat redundantly in the age of laptops and smartphones – imprinted onto the palpable, creamy pages of parchment known as books, falling into the black hole of oblivion?
In 2010, the world got a ‘canary in the coalmine’ moment with the announcement that Encyclopedia Britannica, after a 244-year-long run, would cease publication of its paper editions.
The Guardian’s obituary for the “dinosaur,” owned by Swiss banking magnate Jacqui Safra, deserves repeating.
“Its legacy winds back through centuries and across continents, past the birth of America to the waning days of the Enlightenment. It is a record of humanity’s achievements in war and peace, art and science, exploration and discovery. It has been taken to represent the sum of all human knowledge.
And now it’s going out of print.
For some readers the news will provoke malaise at the wayward course of this misguided age. Others will wonder, in the era of Wikipedia, what took the dinosaur so long to die.”There are other harbingers of impending disaster that demand some handwringing, and not just for nerdy bibliophiles. Webster’s Dictionary, for example, aside from honoring “justice” (hint: think ‘social justice’ lunacy as opposed to sober-minded legal justice) as its word of the year for 2018, has shown a marked tendency for allowing the more questionable elements of modern culture to seep onto its pages like a coffee stain.
Fight for the West. Preserve human knowledge. Support the Junior Classics. Because this is a generational and existential project, and it’s just getting started. As evidence for the strong interest in this, the campaign is now at 700 percent of goal.
Books hold insight into a world that cannot be altered or destroyed from the distant data overlords hunkered down in Silicon Valley. Books are anchors in a storm-tossed sea of change, where it is nearly impossible to get a secure footing. Books provide harbor from the tyranny of men, hell-bent on destroying any vestige of the past so that their plans for some future dystopia will meet less resistance. Books, the ultimate source of wisdom and knowledge, handed down through the ages, remain the last bulwark against tyranny. Treasure your books and never turn them in; they’re our lifeline to a benevolent and decent future.