Books condemned to be burned

There is a conundrum about condemning and burning books in the modern age (which, for these purposes, I date from with the Act of Toleration (wiki) in 1689): 

What is the point of burning books in an age of internet and mass literacy? 

And, the flip side: 

In an time of mass printing, widespread literacy, freedom of worship, increasing diversity, global communications, what is the point of orthodoxy?

This was my starting point for the whole heresy project. I am not sure I am any nearer an answer than when I began, though perhaps the questions have become a little clearer. 

The purpose of condemning books

Condemnation (a global timeline) has several functions. Practically, it allows and legitimates an authority to seize and destroy any copies of an offending text that they find. Condemnation declares a marker, a line in the sands of what an authority will tolerate. It is a warning: possession of a banned book - or even a book liable to be banned - is enough to identify the holder as subversive. 

Politically, condemnation is public positioning: 'virtue signalling' to supporters and a warning to supposed enemies. Forbidding and destroying texts is self-serving. It creates a self-sustaining feed-back loop: legitimating the action, applauding the hell-raisers, feeding the need for further targets, creating victims. 

The warning is deeply sinister: I shall eradicate you, your memory and your memorials.

Consequently, to knowingly keep a banned book becomes a secret badge of opposition, a marker of an alternate, dissident, identity. 

“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.” and other Quotes from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

And it's dangerous in troubled times. It is so much easier to prove someone is in possession of a forbidden text than to evaluate the subtleties of their beliefs. And to give their beliefs consideration is to regard an enemy as human. 

Condemnation and burning are public dramas for public effect. Shared anger - however confected - is unifying. It ties together those who disapprove - and it is always so much easier to bind people together through dislikes and enmities, than it is to persuade the same people to unite on something they can all affirm. 

Yet at the same time unity based in enmity is unstable: to be sustained it must be managed, continuously reinforced with new targets, new victims. It must be dramatised: it must feed the fear of being different. Books are cheap, available and magic.

Book burning

Fire is not rational: it is an easily available weapon when rationality is not seen to be a solution to whatever the problem may be. To burn a book is to reduce meaning to ash, to dismiss argument as nugatory, to deny the validity of both author and reader.

Books officially burned in Britain

In Britain, historically, the task of burning books was given to the state executioner, the hangman, to make the point. 

Burnings took place in public, generally at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh, and the Tower of London. Both were places of historic significance and violent punishment. They were not the only sites: Arthur Bury's Naked Gospel, for example, was also burned in front of his Oxford College.

Why books stopped being burned

As politics grew more liberal (in the broadest terms), and society more secure, condemnation became increasingly likely to evoke a loud and affirming public reaction. 

At the same time new and more subtle ways of censorship developed, not least market mechanisms.

But perhaps the more positive reason is the widespread acceptance of open, liberal society. There is no need to censor as a means of control when society is generally secure, self-confident, reasonably harmonious, adequately policed and where citizens believe they count.

But take nothing for granted

Globally, heresy is still a live issue and engenders threats to person, livelihood and life in many parts of the world. And book burning has not gone away. The most recently reported incident (I believe) was in China in December 2019 (seven months ago as I write). From The Guardian, 

Earlier in October, the [Beijing] ministry of education had ordered all primary and secondary schools to “firmly cleanse” their libraries of reading material deemed illegal, improper or outdated as part of efforts to “create a healthy and safe environment for education”.  

In at least one place this was done by burning the chosen books. There was opposition in China where some people remembered the Qin dynasty (wiki) in which, not only were books burned but scholars too were said to have been "burned alive as a way to control the populace and prevent criticism of the regime." (Though there seems some doubt over the historical events.)

Digitisation has created a revolution in communication. It has enabled an explosion of fora for individual expression - argument, alliances, art, vision, debate, discovery. It has, inevitably, also given new tools to those with power, and some  will wish to use that capacity to control and silence others.