The Decline Of Books

I’m writing this after reading this article about the supposed destruction of the Library of Alexandria by 4th century Christian rednecks. Turns out it’s not quite how things actually went down, according to the article above.

This sentence jumped out at me:

The real problem is that we are used to simple stories. Good guys versus bad guys. A clear moment when everything went wrong. But history doesn’t work like that, especially not institutional history. Libraries don’t just disappear overnight unless there’s an earthquake or a natural disaster. They decline gradually as funding dries up, staff leave, collections deteriorate, and society discovers other interests.

(Or the old population dies suddenly/mysteriously or is replaced….)

This is not new. It also happens to modern institutions. Think about the small-town library where people spent their childhoods. It didn’t stop being around because religious fanatics burned it down. It was because the local government cut funding, people stopped borrowing books, and nobody could be bothered to fight for it anymore. This is how most institutions die.

The Ptolemaic library system had been struggling for centuries before Christianity arrived on the scene. Political chaos, reduced patronage (meaning reduced funding), and competition from other centers of learning—all the usual suspects—were already contributing to the demise of the Library of Alexandria.

So society might’ve discovered other interests apart from reading.

I still read and willl probably never stop. But there are alot of useless books and in Melbourne most of the shops stocking new books aren’t worth walking into. You can blame the boring tastes of the retail stockists for that... and bad marketing.

Most younger people would probably consider reading long-form literature a kind of torture. But then there are many bookish-intellectual type oldies who nevertheless believe a lot of stupid things, so a lifetime of reading obviously hasn’t helped them and it’s hurt us. Books are one way of acquiring knowledge, wisdom or stirring the imagination. There are others. Just because you read alot it doesn’t necessarilly follow that you are smart and open-minded. You could just be entrenching your own prejudices by reading stuff that confirms your biases.

Society has new interests now. They’ve probably concluded that the bookish types haven’t really led us very well.

Reading is a good skill if you know how to use it. So to that end I still encourage it. But it’s not the be-all-end-all. You need to know when to stop and just go outside and see reality, as per the drawing above.