“Everything is there: the minute history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalogue of the Library…” (Borges 83)
This short story, “The Library of Babel,” was AWESOME.
Immediately after reading it, as well as during, I thought of the episode of
Dr. Who in Season four: “Silence in the Library.” These two stories are
incredibly similar. Both stories have an infinite number of books and these
books are people— their story, their very essence. In these libraries, there
was every single book ever written and that ever would be written. A quote from
Dr. Who to match Borges’:
“Spoilers. These books are from your future. Don’t want to read ahead, spoil all the surprises.”
What I want to dig into is the idea of knowing one’s future.
Is it good or bad? Desirable or not? I think that in order to come to an answer,
we have to figure out what reasons cause the want to know, both as an
individual and as a society. There are countless examples of human fascination
with the possibility of knowing one’s future. With fortune tellers, visions,
and claimed spiritual visitations, humanity tries to imagine that the future is
something tangible that we can look into. In the Library of Babel, the people
kill each other in their search for the one book that tells of their lives,
expecting to find an object that will just give all the answers.
The fascination with one’s future may be because humanity
seems to fear the unknown. Perhaps it is a part of our nature, an instinctual feeling.
Humans study things, probe, and experiment, all in order to find out and record
all that we can. Unlike Socrates, we are not satisfied with knowing that we do
not know. The need to know is what drives us, and our future is something that
can never be discovered by probing with a stick. So, are there cases when
knowing your future could help you? Or would it destroy you?
Here is the scene from Dr. Who showing the library. While it doesn't have hexagonal galleries as in "The Library of Babel," it gives you an idea of what such a library could be like.
