Up In Smoke: OP/ED

Christa Knell           Opinion/ Editorial Article             1/31/12

                                   

                                  Up In Smoke

                          

         Today the emperor has announced that he is planning to burn all of the Confucian books. The emperor does not believe in the beliefs on Confucianism. These books were a big threat towards the plan to unify China. These Confucian books were holding people back by slowly making them think that imperial rule was bad which would soon lead to revolution. Burning these books is the wrong choice! Many people in China love to learn new things. Burning these books will not change peoples thinking, but cause people to lose their prior knowledge.

         People all over the world will be learning lots of new education and beliefs, but China can’t because all of the Confucian books are gone! This will affect traders greatly because they will not be able to have the ability to understand the religions of other countries. Also Confucian beliefs say that there is a friend-to-friend relationship, without this a lot of people may not have proper relationships with one another. This is key to good relationships with one another.

         Considering that burning the Confucian books would help the emperor unify china, sooner or later people would realize that they need those books to learn all this information that might be important in the future. Some may disagree, and believe that burning these books was a good way to eliminate past future so the emperor could start fresh and new. But without the past there would be now present. Many of the inventions and ideas from the past have helped present day.

         China should spend more time thinking about the long-term affects of taking big risks like burning these books. With these biijs China will be able to learn so much more and have a deeper understanding of their past culture. Even though the emperor does not believe and support in it, that does not mean that the information and practices can’t be useful. Everything has a meaning and a purpose behind it. The emperor should rethink his decision and not burn those books.