Book burning is something that sticks in our craw a bit.
Most of us are taught that the burning of books is a bad thing. Ditto for flags. And world history during the last century has been littered with ominous events of hatred and intolerance, in which the burning of books or flags has played a central symbolic role.
Witness the mass book burnings in Nuremburg, during the rise of the Third Reich, the burning of the new testament by orthodox Jews in Jerusulem, or the burning of copies of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic verses in the cities of Bolton and Bradford, in the UK. No matter whether it’s many copies of one book, or piles of different books, the image of book burning is one that tends to disturb anyone with even a modicum of education and tolerance.
Hell, even Harry Potter isn’t safe.
And it’s not confined to any one school of thought or religion. The extreme ends of all the tribes of Abraham; Jewish, Muslim and Christian have publicly burned books at one time or another.
This weeks’ story about previously unknown, small-time, small-town self-styled pastor Terry Jones and his plans to burn copies of the Koran on the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks provoked a storm of controversy around the globe.
Which was exactly what this little non-entity wanted. Now this mustachioed moron has a world stage in which to broadcast his medieval mutterings.
The media – as is so often the case – has frantically fanned the spark into a full-blown frenzy. I mean, come on – this nowhere man had a congregation of less than 100 like-minded simpletons. The protests in the Muslim fringe were likewise very small in number, but media reports made it look like some places were on the verge of nationwide uprising.
Regardless of the outcome of this particular story, the best lesson we can all learn is this:
Sometimes the best way to deal with fucking idiots like Jones, is to either ignore them, or better yet, laugh at them.
After all, books are nothing more than paper and cardboard, with a bit of writing and binding. The book itself is not important. What is important, are the ideas that the book expouses. And if the ideas are worthy, they remain in the hearts and minds of all those who understand and believe them.
What we should feel for those simple-minded fools that have to burn books to make a point, is not anger or outrage, but pity for their ignorance. And in doing so, not only do we demonstrate our better nature and superior belief, we also take away the power that book burning has to hurt us.
The worst reaction we can display is precisely the one that has displayed in this instance; presidential pleas, government pressure, media coverage and flag-burning in mosques, all of which justifies and validates the actions of the moron minority and which in turn gives them power over us.
Screw that!
A book is just paper. A flag is just a rag on a pole. The real value of both is inside us. And it’s somewhere safe, that can’t be burned so easily.
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