Because of not knowing history and lack of education, they are brutally demolishing their historical buildings

We met philosopher Molor-Erdene.S to talk about how why Museum of Nature, Theatre of Drama, Theatre of Opera are values and how to protect them?

-I want to ask what a value is.

-There are many values. Constitutions, liberty, education, health and artworks are included. In other words, what cannot be measured by money is value. Rather, dollar and mining cannot be viewed as values. Hospitals witnessing our birth, dramas guided us to art, opera theatre, and historical museum that is keeping what we wore and used are our values.

-Why opera theatre, drama theatre and museum of natural history are our cultural values?

-Because these buildings have their own life. People have history of working and creating there. It is not the building itself rather through the building, the people used to work there from morning until night should be expressed and protected. To protect opera theatre means respecting the people who founded and works created by artists. Soul of art works are there. It means to protect them. Protecting what human created. Even the building was built by human. Therefore we must protect the building itself.

Destroying historical buildings such as opera theatre, museum of natural history means we are destroying our memory. They are being destroyed to make us look as if we did nothing, created nothing and cannot do anything. Therefore our youth will have no history to talk about.

-Then how can we protect them?

-European countries take old buildings and old museum under the state protection. I give you one example, house of one American philosopher happen to be under the state protection. Once he tried to nail to hang a picture on the wall, he received ticket, because it is historical memorial place which is under state protection. He needs permission to hang picture on the wall. Even the color cannot be changed. So, we also must take all the buildings around Sukhbaatar square under the state protection, especially opera theatre and drama theatre. If you want to build a new theatre, then you can do it in a different place. These theatres must not be moved anywhere and their colors cannot be changed. We must take every historical building under protection so then we must talk about history and culture.

-What can be viewed as history and historical?

-We, Mongolians are people who know nothing about history and culture. We understood only wedding and what we wear as history and culture. Worshipping in a hero from a fairytale superstitiously is not history, it should be intellectual work of people. Book, artworks, architectures and evidence of historical events considered historical.

For example, in Munich, Germany, there is “Church of Women”. It is forbidden to construct any building higher within 100 meter around that church, because the church must be seen from faraway. It is the opposite in here. We built all the tall buildings around the government palace. Generally, government palace must be seen from everywhere.

Moscow, too, demolished all tall buildings in the city center and built them in outside of the city. Now, tall glass buildings are outside the city. Historical buildings like Kremlim Museum stayes in the city center. It is forbidden to build tall buildings beside Kremlin Museum. There will never be any tall glass buildings built around Forbidden City in Beijing. This is how countries and their people protect and respect their historical cultural heritages. Our knowledge of history and culture is too infantile.

-There are even people who don’t see museum of natural history as historical monument because it is just 50-60 years old. Now they are on trial whether to demolish it or not. Tell us good reason to view it as historical building.

-Natural history museum was the first to be named as national historical museum. Cultural things we used to use in ancient time are exhibited there. This is the only reason you need. Ger, tools and furniture that were used inside must be there. This is museum. Our new generation must look our history and learn from there, so that our modern life of tomorrow must start. History must remain as history and we must go on to develop further by knowing our history.

-How do people of any nations create and transfer their history?

-Everything created by man is history. Many things like classical art, classical book, and paintings can be named as world history. We must know how we were created and what phases we went through and teach those to new generations. For example, since when Ulaanbaatar has heat line, when theatre of opera built, when did we start art, what is the history of a theatre of opera and drama, what is meaning of museum exhibition. All these must be learned through history subject at school. In Germany, students go around the city and learn about all the buildings from their history with their teacher. In other words, children there learn about their city and historical monuments through history lesson. For us, teachers talk about fairytale and myth under the name of history. For children in 21st century, “Jangar” isn’t that interesting. People of any nation must always protect what they made and created. We must not demolish maternity hospitals. If they are demolished, then birth histories of thousands of people will be destroyed.That is a crime.

-Starting from the museum, where Prime Minister Genden.P lived is being demolished. Can we reserve it?

-We have such cold and cruel attitude, because we don’t build a city, building, house by ourselves. We are people who pay other people to build it. We can see how Mongolian man is left behind humanity just from how happily they want to destroy historical buildings.

We are revealing how superstitious, rude and outdated we are. In the end, it is the greed of people who want to earn money by demolishing those buildings and build a new office. At least, what they will build have no aesthetic and architectural solution. In Zaisan, you have luxurious house on one side and on the other side, there is Children’s Prison.

Today, in Mongolia, we do not have basic needs of human society. At least, we don’t know history and stuck with myth and fairytale. History education is lacking between Mongolians. Because we don’t know history and learn education, we are acting rude by demolishing our historical buildings. Having education is very important.