21 March 2022 | From the friendly caves of Pixie Hollow.
Qin Shi Huang was the first Emperor of a unified China. But that was not his most famous act.
He abolished feudal power in the territories. But that was not his most famous act.
He issued orders for universal standardization, from currency to measurement to writing. But that, too, was not his most famous act.
No! Qin Shi Huang's most famous act was burning books.
You see, Qin Shi Huang was obsessed by alchemy and magick, and sought to find a way of gaining immortality. He wanted to find someone who could create an elixir that would extend his life. However, his Confucian scholars censured this act; they felt that it chasing charlatans. The scholars' disapproval was very strong. This, combined by their continued advocacy of a return to a feudal system, resulted in an epic book-burning.
This event allegedly took place in 213. Qin Shi Huang burned burned all books that did not deal with medicine, agriculture, prognostication, Qin himself, and books about Qin's imperial reign.
Qin wasn't a nice ruler. He was a legalist. And in some listicles online you'll find him at the very pinnacle of a list of "most cruel tyrants".
You'll have seen Qin's tomb if you recollect seeing images of rows upon rows of terracotta soldiers. Excavation of his tomb began in 1974, and it was recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987.
The curious thing?
As much as Qin has been held to be an inhuman, superstitious and incalculably cruel villain, his legalist bureaucratic structure remained in place as the basis of all subsequent Chinese dynasties.
But let's come back to the book burning.
The Smithsonian has an excellent article on book burnings throughout history. In brief, they include:
- Qin (in year 213, remember)
- Various rulers of Ancient Rome
- The Library of Alexandria, which suffered burnings at every conquest, including Caesar in 48 BC, and Caliph Omar in 640 AD.
- The US Library of Congress in 1812 - also a result of conquest/war
- The National Democratic Socialist Party in Germany in the 1940s
- Mao Zedong, when he took power in China
- The Jaffna Public Library in Sri Lanka was also recently burned by Sinalese Buddhists!
Burning books has been a mark of a victor, where that victor often felt like a victim. Knowledge is often seen as being dangerous.
You may have experienced that when you've had a new Leading Light in your organisation, who goes through and totally remakes the intranet in his or her own image.
It's not often completed in the name of knowledge access and retention.
As Ray Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451:
“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door,” one character warns another in Bradbury’s story, arguing for why they must be burned and their knowledge erased. “Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”
So what has this got to do with you and your content, your communications, your materials?
Ah ha! You may think smugly. Mine are all in the cloud...
Well, let me tell you a couple of things about that:
- Software companies go out of business all the time.
- If your materials are in a proprietary system (like Google Docs), then if you lose that system you lose everything.
- Technology (and the files it creates) must continually be updated, or you'll lose access. (Just ask any historian in any museum about that.)
- Technology can break easily, from power outages, to ball bearings wearing loose.
- Technology can create stable file types (like PDFs) but then new challenges come along (like storage space).
- Technology creates an unimaginable environmental impact (from power generation to mining of rare minerals).
And yet paper can only be destroyed by water, by fire, by physical intervention (e.g. tearing), and by time (if it's not acid-free).
I'm telling you this because keeping a paper archive of your key materials, in a safe location, and well-indexed, is far superior.
It's also going to stop anybody from "burning" your materials.
How might they be burned?
- viruses
- extortion
- internet failure
- internet filters
- hackers
- passwords all changed by a disgruntled, outgoing employee
- government visitation (like public servants seizing computers in Victoria this year)
- sharp drops in revenue (paying for that cloud? oh sorry...).
They're risks few people ever consider.
But they're real.
Don't let anybody burn your books. Your content, your communications, your knowledge is written. It's the lifeblood of your business.
xx Leticia "history is written by the victors because nobody else's writing survived" Mooney
Please let me know what I can do for you.
Leticia Mooney is a consultant with decades of experience writing with and for people like you. Her company Brutal Pixie casts the kind of spells your customers love. Its services are oracles (communication strategy, CCX, audits, investigations, quality assurance), metamorphoses (training, mentoring, coaching, wargaming), and your stories in magick hands (ghostwriting, content writing, editorial support). Leticia is also
the mother of an intelligent, engaging, and curious boy, who is named after a character created by J.R.R Tolkien.
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