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June 09, 2005
What's wrong with OUR unruined ruins?
I've been reading about all these Americans who suffer from an unmedicated condition called "Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome (aka "OTS"), who are fond of going to other countries and marveling over stuff like crumbling buildings. (Via InstaPundit.) I'm a morbid person. Really, I am. And at the risk of sounding sympathetic with the PC tourist crowd, I'll admit to a certain reluctance to condemn anyone for enjoying crumbing buildings or things that are rotting away. Beauty can be found in these things. What I don't like is making moralistic judgments about the cultural "superiority" of decay. It's neither superior esthetically or culturally, nor is it ecologically pure. It's just sometimes beautiful. (I might add, so are micro photographs of diseases.) Plus, you don't have to go to places like "unspoiled Havana" in order to find it. Right here in the good old USA we have perfectly good rotten buildings! Like This Old House -- photographed just the other day at a local Pennsylvania state park: Eat your heart out, Fidel! (May Bob Vila forgive me for what I called the place, but I love it and I could move right in tomorrow!) If you want a more patriotic theme, there's this ruin, captured at Valley Forge National Park over the weekend: George Washington must have done something there. Or near there. And anybody who doesn't like it is definitely a commie! What I find incomprehensible is the idea that somehow Americans need to travel long distances to exotic places to find crumbling buildings. (Or decrepit human beings, for that matter.) They're all over the place right in our own backyards. The fact is, America is crumbling too. But who shall defend our domestic quaintness? Are German, French, and Japanese tourists going to flock to local American parks and report back to their countrymen that they'd better hurry up and see America's ruins before some government bureaucrat declares them unsafe (or wheelchair inaccessible) and orders them torn down or rebuilt? There's a double standard, and there's nothing fair about it. So what makes Cuban ruins more worthy of "preservation" than American ruins, anyway? I'm still baffled. Sheesh. Next they'll be admiring unsanitary hospitals and horrific health care.... posted by Eric on 06.09.05 at 04:07 PM
Comments
That Chesterton quote obviously ties in with Spengler's polarity of the Castle (Time) and the Cathedral (Space) as the two prime estates. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 9, 2005 11:59 PM THE PORTRAITURE OF CALIGULA: New website dedicated to the iconography of princeps Gaius Caligula. This is a non-profit site run by Joe Geranio...........portraitsofcaligula.com Joe Geranio · June 10, 2005 01:17 AM Back to your main point: Yes, indeed, we must get back to appreciating our own country, our own (Western) culture, our own history, our own historic religions. I have often thought about this: Back in the days of Columbus, Western men went to the East to look for wealth (gold, spices, etc.), but looked to their own (Catholic) church for spiritual meaning. Today, in our decline, Westerners have all the wealth, but go to the East for spiritual meaning. As for those touring Cuba, I say bluntly that anybody who admires Castro is a Communist and should be publically identified as such. The only ruins I want to see in Cuba are the ruins of Communism. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 10, 2005 10:11 AM Great pictures, Eric! There's a blog dedicated to "flash fiction" which I contribute to (in the comments section). The daily theme is based on a word, phrase or picture. Check out the pic on this day. Then take a whirl at the full site of pics. Awesome. Darleen · June 10, 2005 12:59 PM The Portraiture of Caligula: Book Review on Die Bildnisse des Caligula. Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Das romische Herrscherbild 1,4. Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. 138 pp., 52 pls. ISBN 3-7861-1524-9. DM 190- Book Review from American Journal of Numismatics 3-4 New York 1992- By Fred S. Kleiner. Anonymous · June 11, 2005 12:46 AM The style of that! Hail to the Roman Empire! Classical Values! "Do you vish to see zee Roman ruinss, zee Roman remainss?" asked the German. Germany and Rome. The Germans thought they were the Romans, but they turned out to be the Carthaginians instead, and America is now Rome. Imperium Americanum. Hail to the Empire! Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 11, 2005 12:38 PM Empire. Empire. Empire. Under the Gods. Steven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-worshipping man's-man-admiring myth-based egoist · June 11, 2005 12:39 PM |
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Quite true. We should look in our own backyard to find the Diamonds of Golconda.
The style of ancient ruins. Romantic. Noble and tragic. And gives us a sense of "memento mori".
Here's some thoughts about ruins, romanticism, and religion:
"If you wish for a sharp test to divide the true romantic from the false (a valuable thing when considering the claims of a poet, a son-in-law, or a professor of modern history), about the best I can think of is this: that the false romantic likes castles as much as cathedrals. If the poet or the lover admires the ruins of a feudal fortress as much as the ruins of a religious house, then what he admires is ruins, and he is a ruin himself. He likes medievalism because it is now dead, not because it was once alive; and his pleasure in the poetic past is as frivolous as a fancy-dress ball. For the castles only bear witness to ambitions, to ambitions that are dead; dead by being frustrated or dead by being fulfilled. But the cathedrals bear witness not to ambitions but to ideals; and to ideals that are still alive. They are more than alive, indeed they are immortal because they are ideals that no man has ever been able either to frustrate or to fulfill.
"Ruskin used to beat his bosom because the ancient churches were being restored. He might have reflected that we do not hear so much about the ancient castles being restored. Castles are valued as ruins, as the homes of dead men; but temples, if they are valued at all, are valued as the homes not of dead men, but of immortal gods."
-G. K. Chesterton, "The Riddle of Restoration", Lunacy and Letters