It is not the rleigious symbolism that offends me -- it is the fact that only the exercise of raw power made the people spend their entire lives building a cathedral and getting NOTHING for it. Talk about exploitation. In truth, I am very conflicted when I marvel at the CHicago skyline for much of the same reason, though the exploitation of American capitalism is less brutal than feudal Europe..
Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote: At 01:52 PM 5/31/2002 -0700, eric wrote:
>Europhiles forgive me on this, but everytime I hear about how charming or
>breath taking cathedrals and the like are in Europe I wanna gag. Talk
>about built on the backs of the peasants! We have that hear in the U.S.
>-- we (all of us) cannot turn our backs on our collective history which
>includes slavery.
Too bad you cannot appreciate these material fruits of human labor - which is the mistake that religious zealots from stalinists to taliban made: they saw only religious symbols and did not see the products of human hands and minds. I love the cathedrals, they are exquisite material products created by architects and workers - but I do not give a shit about religious symbolism they evoke in some.
wojtek
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