Loss

It was a good thing that it turned out that the Mali rebels weren't able to burn the texts in Timbuktu. Those books are unique artifacts, penned by the faithful for the faithful (and perhaps the faithful-to-be).They are the achievements of lives dedicated to an ideal. While the individuals have turned to dust their works still endure by some miracle, and that alone would more than qualify these relics to be saved.

We don't seem to have much respect for the ancient past. The mindset is to wipe away and start again from a "clean slate." The ancients were wrong or ignorant or irrelevant; only the current dogma is supreme. It's odd because some of the people before them probably thought the same thing.

When these things are gone they may be gone forever; the precise set of circumstances that birthed them will never be repeated again. Their loss is marked by the world becoming more mediocre. It's like we can't have nice things at all, despite knowing this there's still people going for book burnings.

In this article about Southern Boxing, notice at the end how it says the lineage holders in Hong Kong are getting fewer. Even Bruce Lee's hold is diminishing, and his heyday was just some decades ago. Worse still is what's happening to Nüshu; this is especially painful because Nüshu script was used by females hundreds of years ago to write as they were not taught the same standard as the males.

I really wish Planetary were real.