notre dame or life!
The famous cathedral in Paris, Notre Dame, was seriously damaged by fire in April 2019. Within moments, donations poured in, and some wealthy individuals gave amounts in excess of $1 million, a sizeable contribution to an estimated repair cost that was, at the time, expected to exceed $1 billion, and take around ten years to complete. The then president said, “I am solemnly telling you tonight: this cathedral will be rebuilt by all of us together. We will rebuild Notre Dame because that is what the French expect, because that is what our history deserves, because it is our destiny.”
Of course, that was nothing more than a text book example of political opportunism; trying to appeal to everyone, and gain some kudos from the moment. But it does serve as an example of humanity’s obscene vanity and misplaced sense of perspective. The cathedral is a symbol of lies, division, suppression, and control, representing the worst side of human expression. How much effort, passion and investment is being made towards regrowing the rainforests, those incredible masterpieces of biodiversity which are fundamental to supporting life on this planet, and which took billions of years to establish? And the answer, absolutely nothing. Because we didn’t create them, they have no value other than as something to exploit.
“…because this is what our history deserves.” It begs the question, ‘what of our future?’ This vanity; thinking we’re not only superior to nature, but able to manage her too, is ubiquitous. Now that we have partially acknowledged that the climate is under threat, our default response is to turn to our technologies to try and fix it. Nature is the technology we need, not more machines. But we can’t profit from humbling ourselves, reducing our exploitation, and allowing the Earth to heal itself. Our ego is killing us. We need to stop viewing life in terms of the failed and myopic mantra; ‘What’s in it for me?’, which is currently both our collective and personal default setting.
We need to focus on our future, not our past.
Feb 2022