Notre-Dame burns - but what does it mean?

As I watch my Facebook-feed turn into a series of posts conveying sympathy, solidarity and sadness on the occasion of the fire in Notre-Dame, I can not help but ask myself: where and why does this outpouring come from? What is this special meaning of a cathedral in the heart of Paris burning that triggers greater activity within my own social and cultural bubble than, say, a terror attack in St. Petersburg, the collapse of Cologne's city archive, the looting of museums after the invasion of Iraq.

For not wanting to diminish anyone's emotion - those who have visited historical sites across Europe both secular and religious are likely to recall how numerous times they were told that this building or that perished in a fire, an assault, a landslide - and was rebuilt or restored to be enjoyed by future generations.

Image credits:  Nivenn Lanos, unsplash.com

So what is behind the fear of losing the iconic landmark of Notre-Dame?

I have a theory. And that is that the reactions to the fire in the cathedral are a symbol for Europe's and the West's subconscious angst in a time when its identity is being renegotiated. 

Cathedrals are the ultimate church, edifices built by marshaling huge collective resources in times when hunger, disease and war were everyday realities for millions on the European continent. Still today, they tower over the rooftops of many European cities, a symbol that church and religion used to be the center of moral and social life. They are reminders of a time, when social order and identities were - while rigid and hierarchic, patriarchal and sectarian - clear and orderly. It is no wonder that in times of social and technological upheaval we have always looked at the symbols of older ages for orientation and reinterpreted their meaning for us - Roman and Greek ruins that were little more than sources of cheap stone were re-bestowed with meaning as the Renaissance began and the middle ages ended, Cologne's cathedral was finished in the 19th century as German society tried to contain the rapid industrialisation of its economy and society with a romantic re-imagination of the middle ages.

And so, as our social and technological order is once again undergoing change - as digital technology disrupts our economies and behaviors, as we discover that we live in societies today more heterogeneous in terms of political preference, cultural background and identities - Notre-Dame on fire becomes a chiffre for something many feel they have lost - a sense of clear identity and belonging.

While technological and social change is happening all around the world, it's effect on Western and European society has a unique spin to it, because the last few generations in this part of the world grew up in a sense of mastery of the planet. If you grew up in a European-Western context, Notre-Dame (and the Louvre, and European history and Rome and Vienna and Rousseau and John Locke and so on) was not just European history - it was civilization itself. If you grew up European, you were given this sense of your culture being the centre of the world, a place from which - again, for better or worse - all major developments of world history came from (Chinese Emperors and Mogul Princes were rare in our history books). So naturally, landmarks, heritage sites stood as a reminder of that sense of civilisational identity. The proud cathedral - a reminder of a time when we not only felt we knew who we were, but when we intuitively felt and believed that we were the center of all things. 

It does not help that we have now been fed on two decades of images in news coverage and fiction of icons being set on fire by terrorism. The terrorist other will surely become the perpetrator in the conspiracy theories of reactionary minds, as Trumpists and nationalists take to the chatrooms. Yet anyone whose first instinct when seeing burning Notre-Dame was to call out a potential terror attack should be mindful of how Europeans proudly burned and bombed their own cathedrals and places of worship from the 30 years war to world war two onward - visit Magdeburg or Canterbury for cases in point. Europe's proud civilisational history is just as much muddled with violence and oppression as is any other part of the world.

It is good that the building will be preserved, a cultural treasure that can be restored. Notre-Dame will be rebuilt, tourists will at some point once again stroll through it and be told by tour guides how in 2019 a fire destroyed part of the church and how a vast rebuilding effort was established. 

In its rebuilding, Europeans will have a choice of which meaning to attach to this event in hindsight. Will they fret over a lost identity and bestow a rebuilt cathedral with a sense of nostalgia that contests the very different reality in which the West lives today? Or will we discover something new about ourselves, something forward-looking that allows Europe to fear loss less and find confidence and optimism not in our past, but in our future.