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I find it very bizarre that the building of the great wall of China seems to be considered by the author an achievement. I'm rather confident that the folks in
by ur-whale 7y ago
I find it very bizarre that the building of the great wall of China seems to be considered by the author an achievement.
I'm rather confident that the folks involved in the actual piling of stones and likely forced to do so at sword point would have begged to differ.
Also, building border walls is apparently an unfashionable endeavor these days, I'm not sure why one built a 1000 years ago should be treated different.
- djur 7y agoThe author of the linked piece doesn't really ascribe any moral value to the Great Wall that I can see. Something can be monumental without being good. Borges certainly doesn't describe the building of the Wall as a good thing: > Herbert Allen Giles relates that those who concealed books were branded by a red-hot iron and condemned to build the outrageous wall until the day of their death. This information favors or tolerates another interpretation. Perhaps the wall was a metaphor, maybe Shih Huang Ti condemned those who worshipped the past to a work just as vast as the past, as stupid and useless. Borges isn't comparing a good act and an evil one. He's comparing a great creation with a great destruction -- the building of an enduring historical artifact with the destruction of recorded history.
- jmmcd 7y ago> Borges isn't comparing a good act and an evil one. He is a bit -- at the end of the article there is a suggestion that they two acts cancel each other out, and we can agree that the burning of books is an evil one.
- djur 7y agoThat doesn't mean they cancel each other out as acts of good and evil, though. They cancel each other out as acts of historical creation and destruction.