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What should we rebuild on the World Trade Center site? |
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Why not build on this site where the gigantic impersonal "temple to
mammon" used to stand, a branch of a "new Alexandrian Library". (A "branch", because, if someone
blows it up, all will not be lost as it was when religious zealots destroyed the
first Alexandrian Library, whose resources were apparently
all concentrated in one place.) |
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This
would be an institution devoted to open-ended
study and discussion, one of the missions of which would be developing the
Internet as a universally distributed facility to place all the world's learning and art, and the
ability of each individual to engage with and contribute to it, on each person's
kitchen table or laptop, especially in places remote from any city. |
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![[ The Tower of Babel :: Babylonian Ziggurat ]](sq/babelZig.jpg) |
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This would not, however,
be a school in our ordinary sense, since it would be a place where persons would be
straightforwardly welcomed to develop themselves
culturally and collegially contribute to culture -- not yet another place where they would be
subjected to secular persecution of testing and grading. Someone (ref. lost)
described education in our society as: "The pleasurable pasttime of the privileged few
has been replaced by the obligatory tedium of everyone." This new institution would
endeavor to bring back the pleasure, but make it universally available. |
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In 1532, Dr. Francis Rabelais offered a name for such a
place where it would be most desirable to spend our days
engaged in creative study with good friends: Thélème. |
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Note: To see some more influential persons' ideas
what to rebuild on the World Trade Center site (26Sep01), including a
neo-Albert Speer light show,
Click here.
More architectural symbolism? The New York Times' proposal (08Sep02, "Don't Rebuild. Reimagine.") includes,
as its centerpiece, two huge:
twisted towers.
In December 2003, they are down to one "torqued" tower that looks like siamese twins, which they have
dubbed: "Freedom Tower"
(David W. Dunlap, "More Revisions in Plans for New York's Tallest Tower", NYT, 10Dec03, p.B1).
"The 1,776 foot tall Freedom Tower, designed to be the world's tallest and to
stand where the World Trade Center did, will become a top target for Islamic terrorists
as soon as it is occupied." (Daniel Benjamin, "The 1,776-Foot-Tall-Target", NYT OpEd piece, 23Mar04, p.A23) |
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In consideration of the
Postal anthrax attack which shortly followed
"911", I have a suggestion which, perhaps, "everybody" will find offensive -- like the British felt about
using Princess Diana in public service advertisements to wear seat belts:
Twin towers. |
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The final plans for reconstruction of 'ground zero'
"will preserve not only the memory of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, but the remnants - visible and even tangible -
of the buildings that died that morning, too... [including] a 70-foot-tall, 250-foot-long
section of the original slurry wall." (David W. Dunlap, "Memorial Will Preserve Twin Towers' Remnants", NYT on the Web, 17Dec04)
America will at last have its own
Wailing wall. | |
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