In the process of adapting to the virus we see many of us on Zoom meetings and we also see the "Press", those self knighted select individuals as well, with their backgrounds of books, perchance a personal library. But a sneak view leads me to believe that they just loaded some things on a shelf that they got from Amazon and now we see the same copy of Grant or an Obama bio visibly taking its place as an integral semiotic contribution to being "all knowing".
But the real question is; does anybody have a library of real books today, one they have actually read? If so, what does it tell us about them and about our society. I suspect that those with a well read library of over 10,000 volumes is small and I would tend to say that as our population ages the number will be even smaller.
Yet a well read library has a life that may be more than its current owner. I have noticed that in some of my own holdings. I have books from the library of people whom I have great respect, and that book has more value to me than just its contents. The provenance says something that is more than words. How the library can morph from generation to generation is a telling fact that gives us some understanding of our culture and its own morphine.
I suspect however that we will not see such a provenances since we face two trends. The first is the placing of so much on-line, so much in that amorphous setting wherein the marginalia of the intellect is lost. The second is that many in the younger generation do not read, do not even think. They are taught to parrot what they are told not to question it. To question, to seek alternative views, is an anathema to the current "woke" generation. I truly despise that word wherever it came from. But it seems to officially reflect the demand for conformity, and in the case of a library, the elimination of any nonconforming "bespokeness".
I do hope the libraries that are out there survive with new owners. Perhaps they may be forced into some underground safe space until a resurrection of true learning, for that has happened before. For it is only by open debate, understanding, and the confronting of intellectual dissonance that we can truly move forward. Mandated compliance id not just a societal deficit, it is a societal means for destruction.
Happy New Year.
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