People have a moral obligation to respect and preserve places and things that have symbolic importance to others but not to them. Moral obligation is performed on the basis of what right and wrong, and the notion that people have a requirement to do what they know is right. (1) Respect in this case is intended to mean acknowledging that the symbol is important to others and treating it as though it was important to you. To preserve something is to protect it from harm, alteration, or damage. (2) Places and things of symbolic importance are significant the people of in a religious, cultural, societal, …show more content…
The nature of war almost directly conflicts with the focus of preservation. Theft of these items and resell to private collectors can rob the world of these treasures. Construction and Industrial progress can also destroy these items and sites if it is deemed to be “for the greater good”.
War being such a destructive force has been the cause of much of the loss when it come to things of symbolic importance for all of written history to this day. One good example of this is the great crusades, when european armies invaded the middle east to conquer jerusalem they destroyed thousands of texts and scrolls with world history written on them and stole or defaced important religious monuments and artifacts to the local people, these are irreplaceable losses to all of mankind.
When muslim armies took the city back they did the same to the thousands of religious and historic items left behind by the europeans and again mankind lost the knowledge of these texts. This was not the first time jerusalem had been the site of lost items of symbolic importance, the romans took the city and tore down many temples and religious sites and destroyed what they considered to be barbaric documents. what is truly shocking is that jerusalem is still being damaged and fought over to this