The civilization that engineered the sleek, antiseptic, bulky rectangles on the tip of Manhattan island will NOT be able to prevail, in the long run, against it's many enemies. It's too fragile--too rootless. Just 58 years ago, that civilization bleed, died, and buried its finest sons here; to save others.
Today, weekly American church attendance in America is 43%; whereas in Europe it is in the single digits, mostly among the very old. On October 4th 1997, the Washington Mall was filled up from the Capitol reflection pool to the Washington Monument with men, on their faces before God for the Stand in the Gap rally, asking for healing of their nation. When was the last time that took place on the Champs de Eliese?
"...Just 58 years ago, that civilization bled, died, and buried its finest sons here; to save others. ....."I'm afraid I cannot agree with you. The civilization that sacrificed itself then is a far cry the civilization that erected the Trade Towers. May I quote some words written by ciceros_son on this very troubling subject of aesthetics, architecture and culture?
"....... In another of his books, "Living Machines: Bauhaus as Sexual Ideology" he address the peculiar psycho-sexual worldview of Gropius and his circle. The self-confessed purpose of Bauhaus architecture was to create a world where man is a sexual nomad, completely uprooted from family, God, and even sense of place....
...The Great Idiot Muschamp (architecture critic for the NY Times) considers Mies van der Rohe's Seagram's Building (essentially a giant black steel turd)the highest expression of this. I heard a man say that you could tell what a society valued by looking at which of their buildings were the tallest... I would add that the quality of the archictecture is indicative of a society's values. Look at how we build today. Giant, inhumanly scaled scyscrapers sheathed in steel and glass and devoid of any ornamentation. Flat tops (suggesting that there is nothing to a-spire to outside the building itself?). Sharp edges--geometry as destiny.
One of the fathers of modern achitecture, a leading light of the Brutalist school, actually said that to build something beautiful is a "sin." That's one of the more audacious examples of antinomianism and depravity in modern architecture. The purposeful uglification of Western cities...Imagine!
"Progressive" architecture has always part of the materialist vanguard. Through it, they effectively create new facts on the ground, a social ambience suggestive of their empty view of human nature and human dignity...."
"...On October 4th 1997, the Washington Mall was filled up from the Capitol reflection pool to the Washington Monument with men, on their faces before God..."
Nor can the civilization of our Patriarchs be found in that spectacle of men gathered in the Capital city--the sick heart--of the problem, to perform highly public acts of penance and even self-abasement---(in defiance of the words of Jesus Himself about prayer, if you ask me.) It seems, in some strange way, to be a human version of the architectural deformations of our time. More ominously, that gathering was an imitation of an even more ghastly oriental spectacle--the not-quite-million-man-march. Both gatherings indicate a crisis in American manhood, not a resurgence. I'm sorry to disagree with you so much about this.
Is short, I find this an indescribably sinister photo:
