A Canticle For Leibowitz: The Cycles Of Unearthing And Using Knowledge That Can Enhance and Undo Civilization

Between the sense of historical recurrence that ends in nuclear annihilation, and the preservation of knowledge in a world initially hostile to education, A Canticle for Leibowitz looked at the issue of the human mentality never easily catching up with rapidly evolving technology or understanding its proper use, the Catholic Church acting as a gatekeeper for knowledge that can prove dangerous in the wrong hands. Especially those of states bearing the same ambition and sense of tribalism that destroyed civilization beforehand.

An article on this topic would take a look at how A Canticle for Leibowitz tackles humankind’s relationship with knowledge, particularly sizable discoveries such as electricity and atomic energy. This topic could also explore backstory events such as the Simplification that saw the persecution of the literate and how this ingrained culture of mass ignorance resulted in the rising state forgetting the mistakes of the past and heading toward the same nuclear conclusion that undid the Earth in the first place.

The primary line of inquiry to be pursued could be the following: How should we handle knowledge that can both (re)build and destroy life, particularly when we’re aware of how it was wrongly employed beforehand?