In North African and Middle Eastern countries, Jews traditionally preserve every scrap of paper in storage places called genizot – sometimes temporarily for formal ritual burial. I first learned of this from Amitav Ghosh’s book, In an Antique Land – in which he describes his research in the Cairo Genizah, which is the most famous of them all.
Yesterday evening I spent a few hours at the office clearing the shelves of old files, pamphlets, reports, booklets, books. It is a difficult job, which evokes feelings that are somewhere between book-burning and gleeful liberation.
It came to me that too much is being written. People spend their whole lives writing reams of material that few people ever actually ever read – reports, manuals, guides, position statements and whatever put out by NGOs, religious organizations, academic institutions and governments. When it comes to throwing the material out it hits you. What a waste of time, of life, of energy and the earth’s resources! It makes me ask myself what I am doing here too. Perhaps at least I should put an expiry date on this stuff.
Most of my reading and writing today is digital, at least, so it won’t end up in landfill.