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I promised an answer...
Sorry, meant to do this yesterday and then there was lots of sunbeam and the tigers all went to sleep in it.
Which book would I erase from history, if one had to go? While it might, as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladyofastolat noted, be interesting to erase a major religion (or political movement, although those tend to have a wider base than one book) and see what happened, I'd be reluctant to do that without some mechanism for returning things to the status quo ante if the world turns out substantially worse.
The book I would expunge is Machiavelli's "The Prince". There's a good case to be made that it was intended, basically, as a satire, especially if you compare the assumptions and advice it contains with the rest of Machiavelli's political writings (which are largely about the superiority of republics over monarchies and the best ways to achieve justice and equality for all citizens). But because it's crafted to be easily readable, and his normal style is... rather dense and complex... "The Prince" is much more widely read than any of his other work - to the point that many (most?) people don't realise that it isn't the sort of thing he normally put forward. And of course, you have the people who regard it as a guidebook they should follow, which is... not good.
So I'd like to get rid of "The Prince" to: reclaim a serious political philosopher, remove a source of encouragement for deranged bampots (political and corporate) and, as a minor side-benefit, perhaps attach the adjective "Machiavellian" to the sort of political behaviour he would have approved of.
Which book would I erase from history, if one had to go? While it might, as
ladyofastolat noted, be interesting to erase a major religion (or political movement, although those tend to have a wider base than one book) and see what happened, I'd be reluctant to do that without some mechanism for returning things to the status quo ante if the world turns out substantially worse.The book I would expunge is Machiavelli's "The Prince". There's a good case to be made that it was intended, basically, as a satire, especially if you compare the assumptions and advice it contains with the rest of Machiavelli's political writings (which are largely about the superiority of republics over monarchies and the best ways to achieve justice and equality for all citizens). But because it's crafted to be easily readable, and his normal style is... rather dense and complex... "The Prince" is much more widely read than any of his other work - to the point that many (most?) people don't realise that it isn't the sort of thing he normally put forward. And of course, you have the people who regard it as a guidebook they should follow, which is... not good.
So I'd like to get rid of "The Prince" to: reclaim a serious political philosopher, remove a source of encouragement for deranged bampots (political and corporate) and, as a minor side-benefit, perhaps attach the adjective "Machiavellian" to the sort of political behaviour he would have approved of.
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(See for example this article (http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/flor-mach-mattingly.htm), or even the Wikipedia articles on Machiavelli himself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli) or "The Prince" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince).)
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