Preston Bradley Hall Ceiling Detail

Let me take you back in time for a brief moment; to a time when the Tiffany Ceiling in Preston Bradley Hall was an integral component of the Chicago Public Library. Libraries generally are repositories for the collected knowledge of cultures and civilizations, both of the stories told by a given civilization that, at their core, answer questions for which there are no answers and answers to previously unanswered questions. Fiction and non-fiction alike reflect on the general state of what is known and what is yet to be learned.

One of the blessings and curses of the human species is our curiosity, we just want to know about things great and small. We ask questions about everything and when we cannot answer our questions through the use of best evidence we make up stories to explain what we do not yet know. We learn about how things work because we are curious and refuse to depend on stories alone to suggest complete answers. As reason, however, replaces the unknown there is a visceral reaction to reason and the very worst of the human species comes to the forefront of behavior. As fundamental beliefs clash with knowledge which displaces those beliefs the fear of believers (regardless of what they believe) turns into a reactionary, conservative response designed to eliminate that which threatens belief. Prime examples of the inhumanity of belief may be found as one explores the Holy Office of the Inquisition, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the ultra-Orthodox in the State of Israel. Christian, Muslim or Jew, historical or modern times, it makes no difference to the irrational believer when rationality seeks to replace mythology the response from those with a vested interest in the myth seek to protect that interest at all cost, including the total elimination of the enemies of mythology.

One of the first places that the fear of knowledge turns is the repository of that knowledge; to the books and the arts of a culture. Destroy books and art and one destroys culture. So the great library at Alexandria is burned, Jewish sacred texts are burned in Paris and elsewhere during the centuries of the Inquisition, Hitler burns books in Germany and the Taliban destroy centuries old Buddhist statues carved into mountain sides. These are but a few examples of the visceral response to clashes of culture leading to the attempt to destroy.

Ironically, the library seeks to preserve both the rational and the irrational belief systems that precede the rational. It is, of course, the rationalist at work seeking to preserve that which has been replaced. Perhaps this is an act of triumphalism in that it the rationalist can point to the former stories and label them ancient mythology. After all, who today believes that Apollo lives atop a mountain, that Thor’s hammer is the cause of lightening or thunder or that the gods descend from Mt. Olympus to mess with the lives of mere mortals? Nevertheless, those stories hang around to remind us of our irrational past. The library, in preserving these and other stories along side of the rational and enlightened use of explanatory evidence, seeks to preserve every aspect of culture regardless of its origin. How rational and how dangerous this might be when fear triumphs over tolerance.