{"id":23780,"date":"2019-05-09T19:12:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T23:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23780"},"modified":"2019-05-09T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T23:12:07","slug":"brocks-banter-putting-a-price-on-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-putting-a-price-on-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: Putting a price on culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memory is a powerful\nthing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes there is no\nrhyme or reason on how memories are filed away, or how they are conjured up\nonce again, often to the surprise of the individual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They can often be\nevoked by sight, smell, taste and sound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all know the\nsensation of a scent or flavour that has an instant familiarity. As far as\nfamiliarity goes, it can sometimes be elusive, something that conjures up\nseemingly random images that don\u2019t necessary fit together. Like a 1,000 piece\njigsaw puzzle that has taken you days to put together only to find you\u2019re short\none key piece to make the image come into full focus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it is a taste\nof something your grandmother cooked decades ago, or a voice that rings eerily\nclose to that of someone who had a special impact on our own life \u2013 it has more\nin common than just being a memory; it\u2019s part of your history, the collection\nof people, places and things that converge to make you who you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If life was a\ntapestry, they are stitches of experiences, fulfilling or otherwise, that come\ntogether to form the whole. If one is fulfilling, chances are there are more\nthat serve as lingering reminders of trauma \u2013 physical or emotional. Each\nstitch, however, is just as important as the last, and we don\u2019t often\nappreciate what they bring to the whole until they are just out of reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To this end, a certain\nmeme making the rounds on social media over the last few years has always made\nme laugh. It can take various forms, have any number of evocative images used\nto underscore the point, but the gist is usually the same: book lovers are\nstill traumatized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire at the\nLibrary of Alexandria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, that fire. That\nfire that Julius Caesar\u2019s troops purportedly set when they sacked the city.\nYes, that very same fire that happened nearly two millennia ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meme, of course,\nis wholeheartedly tongue-in-cheek, but there is an underlying truth in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That fire was not\njust a fire \u2013 and, truth be told, it was probably more of a symbolic fire than\nanything else \u2013 rather, it was the wiping out of thousands of years of our\ncollective human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who we were, and what\nwe had been up until that point, was largely wiped out; a link to our\ncollective history irreparably broken and, of course, impossible to replace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The meaning behind\nthe meme has, in my opinion taken on new meaning given world events that post-date\nits existence, particularly the fire at Notre-Dame last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That fire, of course,\nreceived its fair share of column inches in this space, but in the days and\nweeks since the blaze, the tone of the conversation has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the flames\nranged, the people of the world seemed united in disbelief that such a stalwart\nsymbol of history could be all but destroyed by a flame, regardless of whether\nits underlying cause was a rogue spark from ongoing renovations, a short\ncircuit, or a carelessly discarded cigarette.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first sour notes seemed to come the\nfollowing day when French billionaires began lining up making significant\ndonations towards the cathedral\u2019s rebuilding fund, compounded by President\nMacron\u2019s vow that reconstruction of the iconic building would be complete\nwithin five years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why, asked some voices in the crowd, were\nprivate resources being sought for this project when there was nary a word from\nthe Vatican on how much they would be offering up from their impossibly rich\ncoffers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A valid question, and a question that\nstill remains valid, but the fact the Catholic Church, in theory, did not claim\nownership of the building factored little into the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This argument was followed shortly\nthereafter by criticism stemming from the US government\u2019s decision \u2013 or, at the\nvery least, the White House\u2019s decision \u2013 to help in the rebuild in the face of\nmounting challenges at home, not the least of which being the lack of\ngovernment support towards restoring clean drinking water to Flint and other\nparts of Michigan. A very valid concern, and a concern which has been top of\nmind for a number of people for many years, and one which is still yet to be\nfully addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More pointedly, there were questions of\nscale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Jerusalem, for instance, Muslim\nfaithful were shocked at the blaze at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest\nsight in Islam, at the same time that Notre-Dame burned. Although the fire was\nrelatively small and contained compared to what happened in Paris, criticism\nbegan to fly about a disproportionate amount of news coverage given to\nNotre-Dame compared to this non-Christian site, and all the conjecture of\nracism and prejudice entailed in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If disproportionate coverage is a talking\npoint, perhaps a more apt comparison is the seeming lack of coverage and, in\nturn, public awareness over a spate or arsons in the United States targeting\nprimarily African American places of worship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people in North American quite\nrightly pointed out that there has been \u2013 and continues to be \u2013 a complacency\nbeyond Louisiana of the fires that destroyed three historically black churches\nin one of the state\u2019s parishes over less than two weeks, and a subsequent fire\nthat appeared to target a largely white church in the same area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it is a fire that damaged or\ndestroyed a place of worship, a humanitarian crisis relatively close to home,\nor human rights issues anywhere around the globe, they are issues that should\nconcern us all, regardless of where we live, what faith we belong to, or if we\ndon\u2019t subscribe to any particular faith whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one grieves for one, or chooses to\nsupport one particular cause, it does not invalidate any other experience. Each one directly impacts the collective human\ntapestry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mourning the loss of\na cultural touchstone, however you choose to define it, shouldn\u2019t be derided,\nparticularly in this climate that seems to be trending towards a society\ndiscounting the value and impact culture, history and the arts has on our\nsociety, re-framing it as something that is either elitist or irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That couldn\u2019t be\nfurther from the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History and the arts are all part of culture,\nbut so too is everything else. It is who we are, what we want to be, and what\nwe will be.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir Memory is a powerful thing. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason on how memories are filed away, or how they are conjured up once again, often to the surprise of the individual. They can often be evoked by sight, smell, taste and sound. We all know the sensation of a scent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6by","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 04:11:29","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23780\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}