{"id":6404,"date":"2019-04-18T11:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=6404"},"modified":"2019-08-31T14:58:52","modified_gmt":"2019-08-31T18:58:52","slug":"the-cathedral-and-the-simulacrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=6404","title":{"rendered":"The Cathedral and the Simulacrum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Staring bewlidered at the images Notre Dame de Paris<\/a> in flames, I was struck with how numb I’d become to news of the terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numb. Incapable of knowing what I felt. The world’s news cameras<\/a> had turned on the sad spectacle of France’s most famous cathedral overcome with churning flames and smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media was awash, too, with live commentary and video captures from phones of Parisians and tourists gawking terrified at the Notre Dame inferno.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shock. Disbelief. Weeping.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As swift as Twitter lightning, chicanery took hold of the educated hordes of social media. “Sign of the times!”, “We stand together with France”, “It will be rebuilt!”, “materialists only see wood and stone on fire…”, “please don’t allow this tragedy to overshadow others”, or “don’t let the far right turn this into a symbol…” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some even said it was “France’s 9\/11”<\/a> drawing parallels between the psychological impact of the images of flaming Notre Dame, and the collapse of Manhattan’s Twin Towers on that terrifying, fateful day in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Debates over the significance<\/em> of Notre Dame’s fire, then, instantly polarized an already-polarized commentariat. Their unrelenting and strident tongue-twirling left me cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, Notre Dame may have been finely wrought glass and stone; it also stood also as a symbol<\/a>, of France, of Christianity, of Medieval splendor, of an age-old civilization. Its fire thus immediately took on symbolic significance, despite the best efforts of Twitter’s rationalist fire brigades to mitigate its effects on the public imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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