Indeed one of the ways we humans transcend our own mortality is to create things we hope will outlast us—art, literature, architecture, institutions, etc.
Losing a thing of beauty, reverence and craftsmanship that generations upon generations of human beings worked to create and maintain is a bit like a second death for those people.
Especially now, when humanity has a nasty habit of building ‘disposable’ crap that actively fucks up the environment, all just for profit.
Dude, they said it right on npr this morning… it’s also right on wikipedia there:
The French state has owned it since 1905.
This is a landmark of historical significance and a center of French life… that’s why people are upset, not just catholics.
It really would be, but I doubt it would be as keenly felt by many in “the West” as this one is. There’s something unifying about this one that wouldn’t be about those. France is more connected emotionally to “ordinary” (white?) citizens in say, the U.S. or Canada, than it is to those other places. Those connections, which also help to dictate exclusion and inclusion, “us” and “the other,” and thus those who it’s okay to abuse and those who should never be abused, run deeper than most people realize, or like to think. Those kinds of emotional connections, and the selective lack of them, seem to me worth thinking about, and an event like this can help one do that. Surely we can both mourn and think in these ways too.
And the aftermath
It’s not that bad. I’d read one place that they suspect it’s burned a few times before and been rebuilt.
We can rebuild it. Better. Faster. Stronger.
errr… And here we go for a good old franco-english squabble 
Are you suggesting a bionic cathedral? With cheesy sound effect organs? “La cathédrale de 3 millions de dollars”
I mean, I don’t travel pretty much ever. I’ve never been off the North American continent. I still spent all yesterday afternoon in tears over Notre Dame in flames. The video of the crowd lining the Seine singing “Ave Maria” makes me weepy just thinking about it.
I’m not getting what’s the issue with mourning the loss of some of the beauty in the world.
Yeah, I don’t get it. There are certain things that cut across cultural lines and are such an embedded part of our human heritage that it’s weird to not be moved by their loss.
Some people just don’t ‘human’ very well.
IIRC St. John the Divine in NYC is/was being built by hand, or at any rate using traditional methods. (Also they had a fire, themselves, about 15(?) years ago.)
Per Wikipedia, the most visited monument in Paris, with 12 million visitors annually.
Maybe something like the “Cathédrale George Pompidou de Paris”?
(ETA: Meaning, if you’ve already got flying buttresses, why not put the rest of the building’s electrical and mechanical systems on the outside, too, like they did at the Pompidou Center?)
There are more craftsmen available than one might think, but I suspect renovations of other historical buildings will have to delayed because this is a gigantic work that will suck up a significant fraction of them. Fortunately, there will be no lack of funds as the building is so famous.
Ha! We’re talking about champions in tax avoidance, whose claimed figures in donations will be largely defiscalized, i.e. paid by everyone else’s taxes. But it’s good PR I guess.
Not like I needed another reason to root against the ND Fighting Irish, but sure, I’ll take it.
It’s a good time to be a Gargoyle Specialist.
There are plenty of practical historians who do this kind of thing - building ancient or medieval structures or clothing or tools or what have you. They tend to be public historians or people in historical preservation.
Happily, I read that as part of the renovation work on the spire (which collapsed entirely in the fire), all of the gargoyles and statues had been removed.
How not to renovate a cathedral, from the new york review of books:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/12/14/scandalous-makeover-chartres/
Some people just don’t like polychromy…
