Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

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This will probably be an unpopular opinion, so let me first start by saying I certainly mourn the loss of history, the loss of a beautiful structure, and that which was inside.

However, as I watched it burn, the thought uppermost to my mind was the nearly 200 years it took to build, and therefore 200 years worth of sucking money and resources from the local (and probably some non-local) populace. And this during a period of history when many lived in abject poverty. How much more might have been added to society if those resources had been used to better effect?

It reminds me of how, even in modern times, the Catholic church has done much the same. My father grew up in the north eastern US in a poor urban area. His family was dirt poor and struggled to get 3 basic meals a day. Yet the local parish pressured, guilted, shamed, and instilled fear in the parishioners to get them to give 10% of their income to the church.

So yes, I mourn Notre Dame, but I can't separate it in my head from the financial predations of the church on its followers.

Tourism is the opposite of sucking money from the local populace? It's a cultural landmark that, iirc, draws in a million tourists per year.

I kind am torn about your reasoning, but I understand it myself. If science and technology was paraded XYZ years earlier, wouldn't things be so much better? Except it's not that easy. Dumping a ton of gold in a pre-medieval economy is worthless. Dumping the right ideas instead (renaissance, medicine, industrialisation) would have been priceless. Though, I wonder, what could have happened if instead people were taxed 10% they invested that in other means -- wouldn't it be nice if it had compounded over all those years...

Your right, in modern times tourism has at least given something back economically. But it's the "10% they invested in other means" I think about too.

> It's a cultural landmark that, iirc, draws in a million tourists per year.

Heh. Try 13 million. :)

I'm sorry that your father's family grew up on the border between needing charity and giving it (that's always hard). But have you considered that maybe they chose to give 10% because they had discerned they could make do with the 90% that was left and they wanted to bestow charity like the widow with two mites? Simple is not foolish, though it may appear so. Your dad may not have understood what their thought process was, though he could see what appeared to be coercive external pressures. (That which is coerced is not charity and if that was going on it should have been stopped.)

Organized religion and specifically Christianity have provided moral and organizational structures that have enriched human existence, knowledge and expression, perhaps more than any other force besides free market capitalism. The Catholic Church isn’t flawless, but its benefits to the human race far outweigh its costs.

I’m an unbending agnostic, but I sometimes feel like I should go to church anyway, just to contribute to the social capital that Christianity generates.

All of the things gained that you mention could have been achieved without the massive & economically draining cathedral structures though.

Logically speaking, yes, the cathedrals don’t provide goods and services (in this case, shelter and storage) that are commensurate with their cost. A productive society in theory has no need of them. But we humans are emotional and irrational, and sometimes you need the grandiose and the absurd to motivate us to greatness - there’s just no getting around that.

Similarly, I’d prefer a world without nail salons - logically speaking. To me, they’re pointless and stupidly wasteful, and here in California they’re everywhere. Yet thousands if not millions of people love to have their nails done. It makes them happy and gives them joy in a world that all too often shows its claws. So even if I had the power to banish them, I wouldn’t. I genuinely believe they make the world a better and more productive place. Just like cathedrals.

You have a good point, but I do wonder if we might not be able to have both-- something that is both grandiose & inspiring and also beneficial in a practical way. I think of the Roman aqueducts as an example, or even the Large Hadron Collider as a modern example, or some of the worlds largest sky scrapers as a more visible example.

And as I think about it, it's not like the costs to build the Notre Dame cathedral were completely taken out of the economy, they would have gone to pay workers and suppliers that added to the economy, so I suppose I should temper my views with such thoughts.

You must construct additional pylons.

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