I feel guilty for feeling this way, but I wish Western society cared as much about human and ecological tragedies as it did about Notre Dame.
Of course, it is tragic to lose a historic and culturally important landmark. But at the end of the day, it was just a beautiful old building and it can be rebuilt. No one is going to starve or die or physically suffer because Notre Dame burned.
The Great Barrier Reef is burning. The Amazon Rainforest is burning. The Arctic is burning. A second species of dolphin is about to go extinct in my lifetime. The old growth forests that would have supplied oak to rebuild Notre Dame are all but extinguished. Every day we are losing things that took thousands of years to develop and can never be rebuilt.
There are people starving and dying of preventable disease, people without clean water to drink, people left homeless by natural disasters, and it’s only going to get worse. Families cannot be rebuilt. People cannot be rebuilt.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t care about Notre Dame. I just wish we could spare some mourning and outcry and money-pledging for other tragedies too.
