Destructive Collection (How We Destroy Things)

Some destruction is accidental. Some is intentional. Destruction works in different ways. And for different reasons.

These are types of destruction I’ve cataloged. I arranged this list according to what each type of destruction means, methods to achieve, first-order effects, second-order effects, and examples.

(Reminder: first-order effects are the direct, commonly noticeable changes. Second-order effects are the effects of the effects and often not obvious.)

Note that there is a lot of overlap between categories. I didn’t attempt a mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive list. That just felt unrepresentative of the messiness of life. 

This is a destructive collection that I hope will change the way you think.

Was Good (or Neutral). Now is Bad.

Social, political, religious, health, or other change that negatively impacts the way we perceive an item or practice. Destruction achieved through bullets, fire, bombs, hammers, words, shame, bans.

• First-order: Destroyed items, scattered artifacts, shame on those who do not change.
• Second-order: Some items always remain. Guided “social evolution” occurs. Future backlash against the destruction. Creation of markets for artifacts which can fund the groups that ban them.
• Examples: Cultural Revolutions in China, Iran, Cambodia, USSR, and more. In China during the Cultural Revolution of 1966 – 1976 the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) were destroyed in displays of patriotism. With those displays went lots of artwork, architecture, and artifacts. For a glimpse into the beginning of this process (though not specifically about artifacts), read this article from 1966. In Cambodia, a related process started when the Khmer Rouge rolled the clock back to Year Zero, in order to destroy old society and rebuild it.

Khrushchev’s anti-religious campaign destroyed 10,000 churches in the Soviet Union. Taliban bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. Savonarola’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” in Florence. Religious-related destruction is a long list, especially when different groups clash over power. Other examples include destruction of Shia or Sunni (depending on location) mosques in the middle east. Mayan codices were destroyed by a Spanish priest. Taoist Emperor Wuzong had thousands of Bhuddist temples destroyed in China and Emperor Shizong had Bhuddist statues melted down to mint coins. Recently, 5,000 mosques have been destroyed in Xinjiang province, China.

Damnatio Memoriae

Forgetting

Memory-stored value starts to disappear. Natural process.

• First-order: The collective loses access to this knowledge.
• Second-order: The collective is freed from this knowledge, can reinvent this knowledge.
• Examples: Go back several generations and common knowledge of the time would bewilder people today. Common knowledge of certain languages such as Latin and Greek in the West. Local languages die out.

Knowledge of how to hunt, sew, wash (without running water), start a fire without matches, prepare parchment and ink, raise animals, butcher animals, stay alive in extreme weather. Compare how some remote island communities survived otherwise destructive tsunamis while more modern communities that lost that knowledge suffered more.

Destruction is Creation

When the act of destruction creates something else, including a new appreciation for the item destroyed.

• First-order: Focus is on the new and on the loss of the old.
• Second-order: Freedom from the past. Art.
• Examples: Ai Weiwei’s triptych of him dropping a Han Dynasty vase (“It’s powerful only because someone thinks it’s powerful and invests value in the object”). Another artist, Miranda Stearn, list of items she would destroy, except if someone intervened.

Intimidation

When enough fear preempts creation. That is, intimidation’s aim is to prevent a future need to destroy by blocking creation in the present.

• First-order: Fear is enough to prevent undesired actions.
• Second-order: The intimidated can change the game.
• Examples: Language prohibitions, including against Catalan and Euskera, languages which survived and grew after their bans. The Dalai Lama may change the game and not reincarnate. The Panchen Lama controversy.

Accident

Unexpected conditions arise that lead to destruction.

• First-order: We couldn’t prevent it.
• Second-order: We did not want to deal with the costs of preventing this destruction. We did not appreciate the complexity that led to this destruction.
• Examples: Establishment of the backup seed vault in Norway, which had been specifically located at a point on the Earth’s surface beyond the risk of ice thaw. This seed vault flooded shortly after it was built. Use of the Parthenon as a gunpowder magazine during the Greece’s war with Turkey. A mortar round destroyed much of the historic building.

Apathy

Destruction out of a lack of care, either active or passive. Achieved when rarity and value is seen as common and without value.

• First-order: The loss of the items themselves.
• Second-order: From our reaction we learn the items’ value only later.
• Examples: Graffiti. Broken windows. The recent Brazilian national museum fire was possible because of apathy. Brazil was formerly a relatively rich country when it collected most of these museum items, but in more recent decades became poorer and more corrupt. The museum which was known to need fire protection upgrade went for years without it and also lacked a operational budget. The disaster became inevitable. Similarly, fire destroyed Delhi’s poorly maintained natural history museum in 2016. Monument Valley destruction by former scout leaders. An active destruction where the perpetrators had no care for the items destroyed.

Cost-Based Theoretical

This type of destruction occurs when it is prohibitively expensive to retrieve an item. The item still exists, but its retrieval remains too expensive and is thus deemed theoretically destroyed. The item may be completely lost in the time that it takes cost to decrease or value to increase, if these factors change at all.

• First-order: The item still exists.
• Second-order: Without a reason to incur the cost, the item s counted as destroyed. Costs and value determine survival. Cost and value can change unpredictably, especially for value.
• Examples: E-discovery used where there is a legal proceeding or military intelligence needed. Expensive (locally determined) medical treatments that could save a life but are not chosen.

Location-Based Theoretical

Unknown whether items exist until they have been found. Only search will determine their existence.

• First-order: We should search for items.
• Second-order: We only search for items if we believe there is value to them, yet we can’t know that until we search and find. What do we search for?
• Examples: First dinosaur fossil discoveries. Abandoned storage units. Buried treasure.

Mimetic

Imitative items and acts have power to control and destroy so they are feared and banned. Achieved through imitations of what we wish to destroy.

• First-order: Humans fight because we are different.
• Second-order: Humans fight because we are similar.
• Examples: René Girard’s work. Twins are considered bad luck in some cultures, killed, or one is put up for adoption. Voodoo dolls. Anything (such as hair or a business card) belonging to the person targeted for destruction is then itself attacked. Prohibitions against images, photographs, artwork representing human forms or specific people. Intentional violence toward a scapegoat strengths a group.

Replacement

Top-down efforts, often by religious and governmental institutions.

• First-order: Replacement is to remove a new generation’s ability to learn and remember.
• Second-order: Replacement is strength.
• Examples: Replacement of a religion, language, or custom with another. Mexico City Cathedral sits on the Mayan Templo Mayor that it replaced. Angkor Wat temples in Cambodia were formerly Hindu and then converted to Buddhist. Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul is a converted church. Egyptian iconography incorporated into early Christian themes (the Christian Madonna and Child is a replacement of Egyptian Isis and Horus). Recent work to replace Uighur traditions, culture, language, history with that of Han Chinese.

Replace language of indigenous groups with forced schooling, as colonists did to Native American children and Australian Aboriginal children (continues to this day).

Punishment From God

Transgressions are punished with suffering and death. Floods, plagues, banishment. Top-down, widespread destruction unavoidable except to the chosen or the faithful.

• First-order: We are saved because of faith and our actions.
• Second-order: Teaches, often tacitly, other lessons important to group survival.
• Examples: Lose ability to communicate (Babel). The great flood and Noah’s Ark. 10 plagues of Egypt. Sodom and Gomorrah.

Intentional / Direct

Intentional acts of destruction with or without hiding. Purpose is to kill enemies, gain power, or redress a perceived challenge to power. Too many examples to name. Putting these all in one category is an imperfect fit.

• First-order: Fear and elimination both of people and items.
• Second-order: The losers of today may be the winners of tomorrow. Retribution. Long memories.
• Examples: Genocide (Armenian, Rwandan, Native American, Guatemalan, Bosnian, Carthaginian, and many others). Holocaust (as German policy during WWII). Rape of Nanjing. Homicide. Feuds, such as the famed Hatfields and McCoys.

British and French burning the Summer Palace in Beijing. The Library of Jaffna burned during the Sri Lankan civil war. Qin Shi Huangdi (the first emperor of China) orders books believed to subvert his authority to be burned. The House of Wisdom of Baghdad destroyed by Hulegu and Mongol invaders.

Decay

Natural processes destroy the item. Decay from biologic processes, erosion, weather. Hastened or forestalled by activity or inactivity.

• First-order: Decay is weakness.
• Second-order: Decay can be a sign of strength. Decay can extend life and memory of an object.
• Examples: Worn old steps show centuries of usage (popularity and value). Kiss-worn pillar in a Spanish cathedral. Tools that grow more comfortable over time with use. Death from “old age.”

Popularity

The more popular some types of things become, the less they are sought after by their initiating groups.

• First-order: Don’t be a “sell out.”
• Second-order: The goal of the niche is to achieve popularity. Oblique social change.
• Examples: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Punk becomes mainstream. “I was into these dudes before anyone.”

Knowledge Deemed Complete

Nothing more to learn from an otherwise harmful or neutral item which leads to the permissibility of its destruction. Either intentional (actively destroy) or unintentional (allow to be destroyed).

• First-order: Lost or skewed memory or past behavior.
• Second-order: Was knowledge truly complete? Freedom from the past.
• Examples: Eradication of the smallpox virus (though still preserved in research labs). Also making and using hat stands, collar stays, corsets — once common, now rare.

Contracting

What was common in the past loses popularity and dies out on its own. Grassroots. Market force of demand.

• First-order: Loss of market, change in population using the diminishing items.
• Second-order: Effect on people who supplied or were supplied by the diminished market.
• Examples: Lower demand for horses after production of mechanized tractors and automobiles. “Formal” hats lose popularity in mid-1900s.