The Notre Dame hysteria phenomenon explained
Anonymous (not verified) 17 Apr 19 19:31
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All those people on here, twitter etc who were in tears , heart broken etc. Its all explained very well here and as you might have suspected it was driven by their own anxiety and insecurity. 

 

https://medium.com/@ericabuist_68176/restoring-notre-dame-is-about-rich-peoples-mortal-terror-ef2cb3ad1ddb

???

While you were posting this - did you do that weird bobbing up and down on the balls of your feet thing that pompous men when they think they're being clever?

Imagining exactly that 

A lot of moralistic hand-wringing here. I have just been thinking about the best way to re-build it.

Other worthy stuff mentioned above is fine, but don't link it all together.

Notre Dame is more important to the world than Grenfell. It affects more people.

Same way as my instagram feed is more important to me than some rando in yemen.

Sorry, this is simply true

Stop it with the jibes please Stixta. I always thought you were one of the nicer ones on here.

Of course I'm not going to do it, but I can think about the best ways, from a structural engineering point of view, having a degree in it.

They should talk to the people who restored York Minster, a similar situation.

Stixta, your posts used to be worthwhile but recently there is a lot of hate, anger, and sadly just plain old attempts at trying to throw it around. Especially on this thread where you have repeatedly told everyone to STFU and then posted some vile comments yourself. Might I ask, that you read the thread before commenting next time you post? 

People pretending not to understand why others care more about Notre Dame than various distant humanitarian catastrophes - it's human nature and was ever thus

why should Chambo not be entitled to an opinion??

i dare say the world and his wife will have an opinion on how the cathedral is rebuilt and it will be the subject of endless discussion, competition, politics......voting....! Who knows.

why the surprise at people being horrified and distressed at watching an iconic monument burn? Is it not obvious? That Notre Dame is a national monument, a focus of Frenchness, and something you expect to be there for ever? Completely different horror to that felt with loss of life but horror none the less.

Minkie irrespective of the event, there is always some clever dick to pop up and explain why your normal human emotions are silly and why they are much more highly evolved than the rest of us, and able to stand above such group think. I'm only surprised the word "sheeple" hasn't been deployed yet. 

Why? It's an 850 year old cathedral, which (unlike St Paul's or York Minster) is actually free to visit. Millions of people from around the world have walked around it, marvelled at the architecture and the stained glass, felt a sense of peace, said a prayer or lit a candle for a loved one. One of the striking things about buildings like this is that they put our lives and worries into perspective. Many people take comfort from knowing that there is something bigger than them, that was there for hundreds of years before they were born and will be there for hundreds of years after they die. You don't expect to outlive a building like that, to see Something which has survived wars and revolutions and been immortalised in literature and film burn to the ground.

Even if you're not religious, it's entirely normal to have an emotional reaction to seeing something like that.

Heh, there is a definite trope of writers who are terrified by death assuming that everyone else is to and ascribing almost everything to fear of death,

In my view it is more about national pride - the loss of a national symbol is a loss of prestige and well-being.  We would feel the same if Westminster burnt down.

Yeah I did, I don't think it says anything particularly groundbreaking.

As for "people who had never lived here or never visited", as far as I could tell everyone I know who was expressing sadness about it had visited, and consider it part of our shared heritage. There's nothing wrong with that.

As it happens, most of the same people were also expressing similar shock and sadness about the Paris attacks in 2015, and about Grenfell. You can care about the destruction of an historic building and about loss of life. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.

As for the money being raised, well I don't think we're comparing like with like. The Notre Dame fire was - as far as we know - an accident, and the fact that a few very rich individuals decided to announce they were making substantial donations to help rebuild it is not entirely surprising. They will want their recognition, and their plaque on the wall when it is eventually restored. But I don't see how their actions have much of a bearing on the reactions we have seen from ordinary people, most of whom will not contribute financially to the effort to rebuild.

With terrorist attacks, or Grenfell, you cannot rebuild people. No matter how much money you donate, you cannot bring people back from the dead. You can raise money to help provide counselling for survivors, or help them to replace their belongings, but you cannot bring back the people who died. In the case of Grenfell, the bigger problem is that local authorities are failing in their duty to make social housing safe, and this extends far beyond the one building which happened to burn down. It is a complex problem which needs both funding and political will to fix (both of which are in short supply while the government tears itself apart and spaffs away half the public purse on Brexit). It is not a problem that could ever be fixed by a couple of billionaires having a willy-waving contest over who can throw more money at it. But Notre Dame probably can be fixed that way, so if they want to donate their money to the cause, let them crack on.

i’m so glad you said that Anna, at the time of Grenfell I immediately wanted to contribute to the fund to help the victims (and manchester bombing same) but in both cases these were not tragedies solvable by money alone. That is the horror of loss of life.

i remember the IRA Manchester bombing. Huge loss of life and a city centre destroyed.

the largely private money raised to rebuild the city has been an unbelievable boost to a city in need of a boost ( and needed even begore the bomb) and has transformed countless lives. Sadly not those of the victims and their families, how could it, but without doubt private money has had an immensely beneficial effect on a city after destruction. 

Raise a glass to cocky old birds, and I shall raise one to you, and let’s call it quits.

But if you say something stupid I will call you out, and I expect you to do the same to me.

it’s rather rich of a proponent of Brexit, someone who positively supported people’s deaths in the name of nebulous “taking back control” and “national pride”, to lecture people on having an emotional response

"Same points now being made about the response by the public to the appalling toll of the fires in Australia.."

 

Really where? I haven't seen this or in fact seen anything like the amount of cash being donated either.. 

 

The original link is just speculative bollocks. Not sure what the position is now, but as per:

https://www.france24.com/en/20190615-france-small-donor-rebuilding-notre-dame-cathedral-paris-fire-french-billionaire-charity-us

as is usual with these things not so much hard cash following "pledges". That's the scandal - lots of rich people "pledge" for these things, agree to spend 15 minutes on stage etc, but it is the little people that dig deep. 

As for hard cash, Grenfell had circa £28m in funds for victims and most people were rehomed by the middle of last year. Save the Children are raising money for Yemen, some of which may go to those school kids.