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Originally Posted by gualbert
You mean like the Tower of Babel?
My parents are very fond of cathedrals, churches (much more than what occurs inside).
When I was a kid, they forced me to visit dozens of them, and now I hate them. It's not ugly really, but they're all the same. (except the sagrada familia in Barcelona, this one is cool!)
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True and false. They are remarkable buildings in and of themselves, I admit many are a bit gaudy, I prefer the Romanesque to the Gothic, the difference in style and impact is like the difference between mushrooms and acid, one is mellow, simplistic, natural, the other can be a visual monstrosity of excess.
But I was also discussing the historical impact of these buildings as a major source of our modern life, aside from their aesthetics.
The Tower of Babel connections is extremely interesting.. the motif in the bible of this tower is the corrupting influence of modernization/urbanization. Essentially the Tower of Babel story is the Bible's version of the modernismo literary movement of South America with authors like Garcia-Marquez who criticised the negative effects of the urbanization of SA countries.. The Tower of Babel story attributes the rise of the city as the rise of moral, spiritual and cultural corruption and decadence.. interesting analogy with cathedrals in the sense of Cathedrals being a driving force behind Medieval urbanization..