Ab Immemorabili

186: Lost Libraries - What Burned in Alexandria and Why It Matters

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What if humanity's greatest tragedy wasn't a single fire, but a slow forgetting that continues today?

Drake and Holly explore the burning of the Library of Alexandria - not as one catastrophic event, but as a pattern of knowledge loss that haunts human civilisation. From the Tigris running black with ink to NASA's unreadable tapes, they uncover how wisdom dies and, more importantly, how it survives.

Key Topics:

  • Multiple destructions of Alexandria over centuries
  • Lost Greek tragedies: seeing antiquity through a keyhole
  • The House of Wisdom and Nalanda: recurring patterns of loss
  • Digital fragility: why modern knowledge may be more vulnerable
  • Mystery schools and hidden preservation methods
  • Embodied knowledge vs stored information
  • The phoenix library: wisdom that rises from its own ashes

    • Featured Concepts:

    Anamnesis: Not learning but remembering - rediscovering eternal truths

    The Inner Citadel: Stoic concept of indestructible internal wisdom

    Indra's Net: Knowledge as a distributed network with no single point of failure

     

    Essential Quote: "We're not just repositories of books. We're destroying the community of scholars, the oral traditions, the teaching lineages, the methods of interpretation passed from master to student."

    Practical Takeaway: Become a living library. Don't just collect information—embody wisdom. Make yourself a carrier of knowledge that can't burn, practices that transform, understanding that survives catastrophe.

    Key References:

    • The Library of Alexandria historical accounts
    • Carl Sagan, Cosmos
    • The Nag Hammadi Library discoveries
    • Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

      • About Ab Immemorabili: Ancient wisdom meets modern minds. Join Drake & Holly for explorations of philosophy, consciousness, and transformation.

      Contact: [email protected] | www.maaoot.org

      The wisdom you seek has always been within you. You're not learning it. You're remembering it.

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