DON'T REBUILD the Notre-Dame Cathedral.
16 April 2019 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
the president of the French Republic
Emmanuel macron has made public commitment after public commitment to rebuilding the notre-dame Cathedral a Cathedral that recently burnt down in the middle of Paris and it's surprising to me that nobody is questioning the constitutionality of this commitment nobody is questioning the moral or political significance of it in 2019 I had a quotation up from my father recently in which my father reflected time of itself changes nothing it is people people in their actions people in their deeds that make history time of itself does nothing at all I'm somewhat horrified by the passive attitude of members of my generation that the future will come about of itself that the future itself will bring enlightenment that all of these terrible things from the medieval past whether in Islam recently resurgent in Isis the Islamic state Taliban so forth whether it's the mean evil past of Islam or the medieval past of Catholicism and Christianity that those things will fade away simply because the number on the calendar gets higher every year and yes I'm intensely aware of the irony that even the numbering of the years in our society is itself a memorial and a monument to Jesus Christ and Manuel Nicole the president of French Republic has committed his nation in as much this is power do so or in as much as he can make the rhetorical claim he's committed the nation to rebuilding the notre-dame Cathedral because it's a monument to France to what France is and and should be it's terrifying for me to imagine that people believe in it's much more likely that people simply have this passive attitude that if the taxpayers pour their money into this monument into this memorial to this religion that as the centuries go by somehow someone else will do the work of creating the secular society that the French Constitution promised them that we we don't have to bother ourselves about making that change I often find myself saying to people this is this is 2019 you know if we're not living in the future who is if we're not committed to make these changes here and now what are we going to do wait centuries and centuries for some other generation to be enlightened enough committed enough motivated enough to make that change at what point do we draw the line and say making excuses for the ignorance that the Dark Ages is over now slavery has its place in museums I certainly think it's a worthwhile and important thing to take taxpayers dollars and to create a museum about slavery explain to people what was so terrible about slavery how it worked examine the past even preserve artifacts related to that slavery and in the same sense it would be a wonderful thing if there were a museum in downtown Paris to the darkness of the dark ages explain to you what was so terrible about the Catholic Church during the fetal period of our history how it held us back from making progress for centuries and centuries the bizarre and perverse ways in which that faith warped our perception of reality and made unbelievably cruel and heinous acts seem normal for centuries that people were literally boiled to death in cauldrons in downtown cities that people were tortured publicly and broken on the wheel for crimes that today are considered trivial they might not even pay fine I remember one case of a young man being broken on the wheel for having stolen a stack of blank paper and in a dynamic way absolutely is linked to to the faith of Christianity the same faith where their hero their martyr Jesus Christ was himself executed by capital punishment nevertheless became a social philosophy and legal system and society fixated on torturing people to death torturing confessions to people gave a punishment the way in which this faith that finds its seed in the New Testament and the Bible grew into a vine that suffocated all the creativity out of society that people were persecuted and interrogated for heresy for free thinking of any kind for questioning church doctrine of any kind the way in which the most absurd beliefs were inculcated into people as children and then enforced through very real violence for centuries and centuries that's that's a story that a museum has to tell that is not the story that the cathedral notre-dame tells at downtown Paris the cathedral note will damned if you go to visit it will not present to you the history of how absurd it is how telling it is that people once once believed that this piece of wood this piece of wood in a in a golden reliquary that this piece of wood was a fragment of the one true cross that people used to come on pilgrimages for what could only be called a hoax even if you were a true believing Christian today in 2019 but you were a somewhat rational Christian you would have to recognize that the cult of the reliquary of pretending that this piece of wood was actually the wood of the cross that a so-called historical Jesus was nailed to him where the wood actually came from and so on so forth the story behind how they found this and the second of putting the church there the real history there it's sickening it's shameful I think if anything you'd feel more ashamed if you were a true believing Christian and you had to look at that history and look at that legacy and feel that it that it's your history that it's that it's your legacy all right the notre-dame Cathedral in downtown Paris that's not its function it's not asking those questions and to pretend that it is would be like confusing a museum about the history of slavery with an actual ongoing slave trading market okay the agenda of the Catholic Church and the purpose of that institution with its multi-million dollar budget in the middle of downtown Paris is not to bring about enlightenment and the secular society that the French Revolution and the French Constitution are committed to it is not clear to me to what extent Emmanuel macron really knowingly and consciously and intentionally wants to throw away the separation of church and state that they have in France and there's a very complex dance for how public funds get used to restore religious temples in France given their constitutional history going back to the French Revolution of 1789 and Napoleon and that whole story that there is really supposed to be a secular government that is neither involved in building and beautifying and maintaining French churches nor mosques nor Hindu temples nor any other any other religions structure there they're supposed to be committed to this there's a broader problem here my girlfriend asked me a couple of weeks ago what I thought in principle about the question of governments taking away land from private landowners and I told her that time this is something my own thinking is had to mature about over the years growing up in Canada it's very easy to imagine that anytime the state steps over the line and takes away private property ownership from people that the state is doing a horrendous and criminal thing our history in Canada the main memory we have the main idea we have associated with the government taking away people's land is of course the government depriving indigenous people of their land today in Ontario it's not the case that white people pay rent to a Cree or a jib way landowner it's not native people who are the wealthy landowners today in Montreal you're not gonna hear white people complaining that they have a mohawk landlord that's not what happened in our country the land was taken away from the people who owned it and it of course it changed the whole oyster the country in various places it was cultural genocide or outright genocide history unfolds dead in Hawaii it's actually a much more recent history that's very well documented of exactly how the American government decided to take away land for the indigenous people of Hawaii and that's why it's very rare to have people in Hawaii tell you oh that they're you know the native people are becoming rich that it's the indigenous people are becoming multi millionaires out of the urbanization and tourism development in Hawaii okay so that's our history with very negative associations with the concept of government intervening on private property on land ownership okay likewise probably you watching this video wherever you are if you just think about government intervening and religion it probably has a negative connotations you probably think that any progressive right minded person believes in the separation of church and state but then that once religion is separate that it just continues in perpetuity unmolested uncontrolled by the Constitution or government with by any intervention and that in this sense the notre-dame Cathedral and a hundred other cathedrals should go on taking up a big part of the landscape a big part of the geography of Paris and every city in France forever and ever and ever and that they should take up a big part of the taxpayers dollars forever and ever so that the gold is always shining on that reliquary so that everything is maintaining restored and look guys things burn down Sicily it's gonna happen once today it's the dr. dam Cathedral a couple years ago one of the Queen's palaces Queen's Ballroom in England burned Queen of England there was this question how many millions of dollars should be put into restoring this and is it worth it cultural heritage maintaining cultural heritage forever and ever doesn't mean just one fire or just one repair okay the budget goes on forever and ever but the problem is if you believe in the principle but the government should never take land away from landowners that means that you believe in aristocracy and that aristocracy should go on forever never in all these countries in France Germany zone they have a history of aristocrats and if the land wasn't taken away from aristocrats and given to other people then the country absolutely could not make progress whether you're talking about Europe or Canada or Australia or anywhere else you always have an ever-increasing dynamic of smaller and smaller numbers of people owning more and more of the land and this is not new was already discussed at length and depth by Aristotle Aristotle in ancient Athens they already had this problem they observed it many times and they observed that they needed government periodically to take land away from the rich and give it to the poor or else democracy would degenerate into feudalism a small number of aristocrats would own everything worth owning a few powerful families would control the whole of Athens or Sparta or whatever that the city might be there's already known thousands of years ago this pattern so on the one hand if you ever want positive cultural change if you ever want to move past the legacy of the Dark Ages in Europe then you have to believe in the government stepping in at some point and putting an end to exactly what the notre-dame cathedral represents and exactly what it really is no that doesn't mean the notre-dame Cathedral has to be replaced with a parking lot the notre-dame Cathedral could be replaced with a museum a museum that really merits taxpayers funding taxpayers dollars that really explores and really examines what was wrong with the Dark Ages and the legacy of the the church that built an amphitheater well examines why people went on these long pilgrimages to see this piece of this piece of wood that really is a kind of religious fraud that they imagined was you know part of the cross that Jesus was hung on and and and the the crazy rationalizations they made up in their own minds for living in a society where people were constantly torturing one another to death in in the name of this faith a religion that was constantly at war with itself and constantly war with the whole outside world until one day in France there was a revolution the people stood up and said no more that the power of the church would come to an end okay this is the problem we're living in 2019 when when is the power of the church gonna come to an end in principle it may sound evil to talk about the government taking away private party ball the government abrogating the right of private properties over the government abrogating the rights of religion what what is the right of religion what is the right of private property if the right of private property is for the rich to get richer is for aristocrats to own land in perpetuity is for the class of people in each generation who happen to get wealthy to amass land ownership and then pass it on to their descendants forever and ever uninterrupted then you you can just look at the situation where now and look ahead in the next 100 years and see very clearly what that will do to the society even if it's just at random that in each generation a few people become multi millionaires what impact that will have okay and what will be the change in the next 100 years if the accumulated wealth the accumulated splendor even of the Catholic Church if that never is abrogated if that's never challenged if that's never changed and if it's not going to be the government then who it's not the case that Starbucks can ever buy the no TRADOC Cathedral this is not a problem that the private sector can intervene in or change it may sound cold it may sound bleak it may sound terrifying but the burning down of the notre-dame Cathedral is an opportunity for something positive to happen for something better to replace it for some kind of step forward some kind of culture and political change for France and it's terrifying for me to see Emmanuel macron standing up without a word of criticism from anyone not from the professional internet atheists not from the left-wing not from the right-wing for him to stand up and say no everything should be rebuilt exactly as it was apparently a taxpayers expense that's not clear who's gonna pay for it that the money should be furnished so that the notre-dame cathedral can remain a symbol of France forever and ever and ever that that's not the future of France that's not the President of France and that's not even the history of France since you wrote your constitution or since you wrote your first constitution in the French Revolution that's a very sad and and shameful thing look guys just to just to put this in perspective you know what what if there was a fire in Toronto that burned down the CN tower the CN Tower was once to tell us structure in the world it's telling what if there was a fire at random and they say you know what now it's not structurally sound it would just cost millions of millions of dollars to rebuild the CN tower in downtown drone CN tower has none of these connotations it's not linked to the history of slavery and feudalism and Christianity it's not a piece of the one true cross for Catholics that worship there's none of these none of these issues that you're just a you know what I think the really mature thing would be for the people to run understand and say you know what the CN tower was a symbol of the City of Toronto for a certain period of time you know what now that period of time is over we can do better we can do something new we can have a new symbol of a new building you know what let's let it go let's demolish it let's take it down we can live with other CN tower the CN tower is not real a symbol of the City of Toronto now or what it's gonna be or what's gonna become you know what let's let's have some detachment the CN towers is supposed to be here okay might be hard to do but I think that would actually be bold political leadership and that would show and and again you can you can propose something better you can look at the millions and perhaps billions of dollars you need to rebuild the CN tower so you know what we don't we need to relive this ideal left over from the 1970s you know what what our city is all about it can be it can be something else all right but in this case in France in France the country that's committed to secularism lazy day to separation of church and state what could be more saddening than hearing that the notre-dame Cathedral is supposed to be the symbol for Paris the symbol for France for the French nation not 500 years ago and not 1,000 years ago but now and in the future forever and ever and ever and at taxpayers expense this is the opposite of a commitment to positive progress this is a commitment to stasis and in 2019 apparently there was just no public appetite for someone to stand up and make a better suggestion
Emmanuel macron has made public commitment after public commitment to rebuilding the notre-dame Cathedral a Cathedral that recently burnt down in the middle of Paris and it's surprising to me that nobody is questioning the constitutionality of this commitment nobody is questioning the moral or political significance of it in 2019 I had a quotation up from my father recently in which my father reflected time of itself changes nothing it is people people in their actions people in their deeds that make history time of itself does nothing at all I'm somewhat horrified by the passive attitude of members of my generation that the future will come about of itself that the future itself will bring enlightenment that all of these terrible things from the medieval past whether in Islam recently resurgent in Isis the Islamic state Taliban so forth whether it's the mean evil past of Islam or the medieval past of Catholicism and Christianity that those things will fade away simply because the number on the calendar gets higher every year and yes I'm intensely aware of the irony that even the numbering of the years in our society is itself a memorial and a monument to Jesus Christ and Manuel Nicole the president of French Republic has committed his nation in as much this is power do so or in as much as he can make the rhetorical claim he's committed the nation to rebuilding the notre-dame Cathedral because it's a monument to France to what France is and and should be it's terrifying for me to imagine that people believe in it's much more likely that people simply have this passive attitude that if the taxpayers pour their money into this monument into this memorial to this religion that as the centuries go by somehow someone else will do the work of creating the secular society that the French Constitution promised them that we we don't have to bother ourselves about making that change I often find myself saying to people this is this is 2019 you know if we're not living in the future who is if we're not committed to make these changes here and now what are we going to do wait centuries and centuries for some other generation to be enlightened enough committed enough motivated enough to make that change at what point do we draw the line and say making excuses for the ignorance that the Dark Ages is over now slavery has its place in museums I certainly think it's a worthwhile and important thing to take taxpayers dollars and to create a museum about slavery explain to people what was so terrible about slavery how it worked examine the past even preserve artifacts related to that slavery and in the same sense it would be a wonderful thing if there were a museum in downtown Paris to the darkness of the dark ages explain to you what was so terrible about the Catholic Church during the fetal period of our history how it held us back from making progress for centuries and centuries the bizarre and perverse ways in which that faith warped our perception of reality and made unbelievably cruel and heinous acts seem normal for centuries that people were literally boiled to death in cauldrons in downtown cities that people were tortured publicly and broken on the wheel for crimes that today are considered trivial they might not even pay fine I remember one case of a young man being broken on the wheel for having stolen a stack of blank paper and in a dynamic way absolutely is linked to to the faith of Christianity the same faith where their hero their martyr Jesus Christ was himself executed by capital punishment nevertheless became a social philosophy and legal system and society fixated on torturing people to death torturing confessions to people gave a punishment the way in which this faith that finds its seed in the New Testament and the Bible grew into a vine that suffocated all the creativity out of society that people were persecuted and interrogated for heresy for free thinking of any kind for questioning church doctrine of any kind the way in which the most absurd beliefs were inculcated into people as children and then enforced through very real violence for centuries and centuries that's that's a story that a museum has to tell that is not the story that the cathedral notre-dame tells at downtown Paris the cathedral note will damned if you go to visit it will not present to you the history of how absurd it is how telling it is that people once once believed that this piece of wood this piece of wood in a in a golden reliquary that this piece of wood was a fragment of the one true cross that people used to come on pilgrimages for what could only be called a hoax even if you were a true believing Christian today in 2019 but you were a somewhat rational Christian you would have to recognize that the cult of the reliquary of pretending that this piece of wood was actually the wood of the cross that a so-called historical Jesus was nailed to him where the wood actually came from and so on so forth the story behind how they found this and the second of putting the church there the real history there it's sickening it's shameful I think if anything you'd feel more ashamed if you were a true believing Christian and you had to look at that history and look at that legacy and feel that it that it's your history that it's that it's your legacy all right the notre-dame Cathedral in downtown Paris that's not its function it's not asking those questions and to pretend that it is would be like confusing a museum about the history of slavery with an actual ongoing slave trading market okay the agenda of the Catholic Church and the purpose of that institution with its multi-million dollar budget in the middle of downtown Paris is not to bring about enlightenment and the secular society that the French Revolution and the French Constitution are committed to it is not clear to me to what extent Emmanuel macron really knowingly and consciously and intentionally wants to throw away the separation of church and state that they have in France and there's a very complex dance for how public funds get used to restore religious temples in France given their constitutional history going back to the French Revolution of 1789 and Napoleon and that whole story that there is really supposed to be a secular government that is neither involved in building and beautifying and maintaining French churches nor mosques nor Hindu temples nor any other any other religions structure there they're supposed to be committed to this there's a broader problem here my girlfriend asked me a couple of weeks ago what I thought in principle about the question of governments taking away land from private landowners and I told her that time this is something my own thinking is had to mature about over the years growing up in Canada it's very easy to imagine that anytime the state steps over the line and takes away private property ownership from people that the state is doing a horrendous and criminal thing our history in Canada the main memory we have the main idea we have associated with the government taking away people's land is of course the government depriving indigenous people of their land today in Ontario it's not the case that white people pay rent to a Cree or a jib way landowner it's not native people who are the wealthy landowners today in Montreal you're not gonna hear white people complaining that they have a mohawk landlord that's not what happened in our country the land was taken away from the people who owned it and it of course it changed the whole oyster the country in various places it was cultural genocide or outright genocide history unfolds dead in Hawaii it's actually a much more recent history that's very well documented of exactly how the American government decided to take away land for the indigenous people of Hawaii and that's why it's very rare to have people in Hawaii tell you oh that they're you know the native people are becoming rich that it's the indigenous people are becoming multi millionaires out of the urbanization and tourism development in Hawaii okay so that's our history with very negative associations with the concept of government intervening on private property on land ownership okay likewise probably you watching this video wherever you are if you just think about government intervening and religion it probably has a negative connotations you probably think that any progressive right minded person believes in the separation of church and state but then that once religion is separate that it just continues in perpetuity unmolested uncontrolled by the Constitution or government with by any intervention and that in this sense the notre-dame Cathedral and a hundred other cathedrals should go on taking up a big part of the landscape a big part of the geography of Paris and every city in France forever and ever and ever and that they should take up a big part of the taxpayers dollars forever and ever so that the gold is always shining on that reliquary so that everything is maintaining restored and look guys things burn down Sicily it's gonna happen once today it's the dr. dam Cathedral a couple years ago one of the Queen's palaces Queen's Ballroom in England burned Queen of England there was this question how many millions of dollars should be put into restoring this and is it worth it cultural heritage maintaining cultural heritage forever and ever doesn't mean just one fire or just one repair okay the budget goes on forever and ever but the problem is if you believe in the principle but the government should never take land away from landowners that means that you believe in aristocracy and that aristocracy should go on forever never in all these countries in France Germany zone they have a history of aristocrats and if the land wasn't taken away from aristocrats and given to other people then the country absolutely could not make progress whether you're talking about Europe or Canada or Australia or anywhere else you always have an ever-increasing dynamic of smaller and smaller numbers of people owning more and more of the land and this is not new was already discussed at length and depth by Aristotle Aristotle in ancient Athens they already had this problem they observed it many times and they observed that they needed government periodically to take land away from the rich and give it to the poor or else democracy would degenerate into feudalism a small number of aristocrats would own everything worth owning a few powerful families would control the whole of Athens or Sparta or whatever that the city might be there's already known thousands of years ago this pattern so on the one hand if you ever want positive cultural change if you ever want to move past the legacy of the Dark Ages in Europe then you have to believe in the government stepping in at some point and putting an end to exactly what the notre-dame cathedral represents and exactly what it really is no that doesn't mean the notre-dame Cathedral has to be replaced with a parking lot the notre-dame Cathedral could be replaced with a museum a museum that really merits taxpayers funding taxpayers dollars that really explores and really examines what was wrong with the Dark Ages and the legacy of the the church that built an amphitheater well examines why people went on these long pilgrimages to see this piece of this piece of wood that really is a kind of religious fraud that they imagined was you know part of the cross that Jesus was hung on and and and the the crazy rationalizations they made up in their own minds for living in a society where people were constantly torturing one another to death in in the name of this faith a religion that was constantly at war with itself and constantly war with the whole outside world until one day in France there was a revolution the people stood up and said no more that the power of the church would come to an end okay this is the problem we're living in 2019 when when is the power of the church gonna come to an end in principle it may sound evil to talk about the government taking away private party ball the government abrogating the right of private properties over the government abrogating the rights of religion what what is the right of religion what is the right of private property if the right of private property is for the rich to get richer is for aristocrats to own land in perpetuity is for the class of people in each generation who happen to get wealthy to amass land ownership and then pass it on to their descendants forever and ever uninterrupted then you you can just look at the situation where now and look ahead in the next 100 years and see very clearly what that will do to the society even if it's just at random that in each generation a few people become multi millionaires what impact that will have okay and what will be the change in the next 100 years if the accumulated wealth the accumulated splendor even of the Catholic Church if that never is abrogated if that's never challenged if that's never changed and if it's not going to be the government then who it's not the case that Starbucks can ever buy the no TRADOC Cathedral this is not a problem that the private sector can intervene in or change it may sound cold it may sound bleak it may sound terrifying but the burning down of the notre-dame Cathedral is an opportunity for something positive to happen for something better to replace it for some kind of step forward some kind of culture and political change for France and it's terrifying for me to see Emmanuel macron standing up without a word of criticism from anyone not from the professional internet atheists not from the left-wing not from the right-wing for him to stand up and say no everything should be rebuilt exactly as it was apparently a taxpayers expense that's not clear who's gonna pay for it that the money should be furnished so that the notre-dame cathedral can remain a symbol of France forever and ever and ever that that's not the future of France that's not the President of France and that's not even the history of France since you wrote your constitution or since you wrote your first constitution in the French Revolution that's a very sad and and shameful thing look guys just to just to put this in perspective you know what what if there was a fire in Toronto that burned down the CN tower the CN Tower was once to tell us structure in the world it's telling what if there was a fire at random and they say you know what now it's not structurally sound it would just cost millions of millions of dollars to rebuild the CN tower in downtown drone CN tower has none of these connotations it's not linked to the history of slavery and feudalism and Christianity it's not a piece of the one true cross for Catholics that worship there's none of these none of these issues that you're just a you know what I think the really mature thing would be for the people to run understand and say you know what the CN tower was a symbol of the City of Toronto for a certain period of time you know what now that period of time is over we can do better we can do something new we can have a new symbol of a new building you know what let's let it go let's demolish it let's take it down we can live with other CN tower the CN tower is not real a symbol of the City of Toronto now or what it's gonna be or what's gonna become you know what let's let's have some detachment the CN towers is supposed to be here okay might be hard to do but I think that would actually be bold political leadership and that would show and and again you can you can propose something better you can look at the millions and perhaps billions of dollars you need to rebuild the CN tower so you know what we don't we need to relive this ideal left over from the 1970s you know what what our city is all about it can be it can be something else all right but in this case in France in France the country that's committed to secularism lazy day to separation of church and state what could be more saddening than hearing that the notre-dame Cathedral is supposed to be the symbol for Paris the symbol for France for the French nation not 500 years ago and not 1,000 years ago but now and in the future forever and ever and ever and at taxpayers expense this is the opposite of a commitment to positive progress this is a commitment to stasis and in 2019 apparently there was just no public appetite for someone to stand up and make a better suggestion