The Cathedral of Notre Dame burned on April 15, and ever since, controversy erupted and grew over funding the rebuilding of the cathedral. The global plutocracy quickly raised tens of billions of dollars and euros to finance the rebuilding. The Gilets Jaunes -- Yellow Jackets -- protesting the decline of living standards for the French middle and working classes reacted with rage, as did advocates of other causes stemming from the grotesque inequalities of the 21st century world. So now the cathedral bears the weight of our conflicts. And who can really blame people for feeling this way. The folks to whom we all owe rent and money, for whom we all work, to whom all our governments defer, think so little of us and yet so much of a single cathedral. All that money that they've been squirreling away in tax shelters and using to buy politicians of all parties on both sides of the Atlantic suddenly gets freed up to repair Notre Dame and not for the people who work for them and create their wealth.
I've argued -- and still argue -- that funding human welfare and human culture is not mutually exclusive. One makes life possible and the other makes it worth the bother of living. But maybe it's time to call a time out. Maybe the cathedral should be left a ruin. I dread the coming proposals to "modernize" the cathedral and make it "relevant." I worry that it will be made from a tourist attraction into a tourist trap, that some awful design created by a mix of vainglorious ego and government/corporate ambition will wreck Notre Dame worse than any fire. Maybe we should just leave it alone for an indefinite period of time until we get our shit together.
The medieval masons who built Notre Dame built it to last forever; and after 850 years, they've come pretty close. But they believed in "forever." We don't. We don't really believe in anything except profits. Is there any building built over the last 50 years that we could imagine lasting for 850 years? Is there any building from those past 5 decades that we would care to have last 850 years? As the fire proved, the basic stone fabric of Notre Dame is very sound and still strong. It can withstand some exposure and some vines and weeds growing out of its stones. Barricade the cathedral off and let it grow fallow until we can figure out what we are doing.
Extra:
From a satirical Italian site; a good vision of what a lot of people fear from efforts to restore and renovate.
I say remove the stained glass, the organs, the relics, the art, stabilize and secure the basic structure of the building, and then let it sit there vacant. Let it stay vacant until the French government or the Catholic Archdiocese or an independent commission agree over who makes decisions for the cathedral. It can stay vacant until a good plan for rebuilding it for future generations instead of present expediencies can be made. Above all, it can stay vacant until an equitable and sustainable plan for funding the restoration is created, one that will ensure in law and fact that Notre Dame remains a public possession.
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