The new Seven Wonders of the World, which were announced last week with great fanfare in Lisbon, are a droll affair. Two are from pre-Columbian America (the citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru and the temples of Chichén Itzá, Mexico), two from Asia (the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China), and one from the Middle East (the rock tombs of Petra, Jordan). The modern world comes up rather short (the mountaintop statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro), as does European civilization in general (represented only by the Coliseum in Rome). Is this list something to take seriously? Does its comprehensive global sweep give it an authority that the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—mostly huddled around the Mediterranean—lacked?
The new list was created by the New7Wonders Foundation, whose own website proclaims—and without apparent irony—that it “was created in 2001 by Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber.” Weber has certainly been enterprising. Rather than forming a panel of experts, he allowed the public to vote for its favorite monuments. It is no surprise, then, that countries with large populations (China, Brazil, and India) dominate the list, and that monuments without constituencies (one thinks of the Stone Heads of Easter Island) do not figure. How Weber tabulated the votes, or what measures he took to prevent multiple voting, is unclear. The Vatican has speculated, according to the (London) Times, about the systematic exclusion of Christian monuments. As the Times reported,
Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, who heads the Vatican’s pontifical commission for culture and archeology, said that the exclusion of Christian works of art such as Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel was “surprising, inexplicable, even suspicious.”
One can no more quarrel with such a list than with television ratings. Still, as a thought exercise, one might speculate as to how a contemporary list of wonders might be drawn up—one not dependent on the erratic wisdom of the internet electorate. For one thing, one might turn for guidance to the original Seven Wonders. Several were noteworthy for their bold engineering, such as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes, which showed their cultures building to the limits of their structural acumen. A contemporary list might recognize structures of similar engineering audacity. Three obvious candidates would be the Panama Canal, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. One might also note that landscape art was represented by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Would it be too chauvinistic to suggest Yosemite National Park as a wonder, one shaped and organized by human intervention?
Whether or not the Vatican is correct about bias, the list certainly ignores one of the wonders of western civilization, the poetic shaping of interior space. Weber’s list of wonders consists of photogenic exteriors—which look good on computer screens, unlike architectural interiors, which need to be experienced. The organized spatial poetry achieved in such buildings as Hagia Sophia, Istanbul; St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome; and Cologne Cathedral is indeed a wonder, and one or more of these monuments certainly belong on such a list. After all, one of the principal reasons for having such a list is educational.
In the end, the new Seven Wonders of the World have less to do with Herodotus than with David Wallechinsky, whose bestselling Book of Lists (1977) ranked the “worst places to hitchhike” or “people suspected of being Jack the Ripper.” Weber’s new list is at best a bit of harmless conversation fodder—although nowhere near as diverting as Wallechinsky’s “famous people who died during sex.”
Is inflaming the Arab street necessarily a bad thing? They’re over there, not over here. How is their inflammation directly or even indirectly affecting us?
Neve Gordon who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University said “Where’s the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?”
Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week” “It is the goyim moralists who are silent, not the Jews. It is the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, not the goyim media, that provides reports of Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. Gideon Levy’s “The Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again” was published in Haaretz (29 December), not in the goyim press. “Israel’s violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion and cross every red line of humaneness, morality, international law and wisdom are not words that can appear in American print or TV media. Such words, printed in Israeli newspapers, never reach the goyim.”
I certainly never hear these opinions on Contentions.
There is simply no bother in worrying about the “Arab street”. The “Arab street” will do what its masters tell it to do, whether in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, or elsewhere.
Personally, I am quite sick of worrying about the “Arab street”, or the “Arab ‘nation’”, for that matter.
To hell with all of you and to hell with your “outrage”. The time for this nonsens is over.
The worst downside in something like this is to lose big in public. As always, it’s better to win. If a truce is imposed by outsiders, they do that because they favor the terrorists.
As I’ve commented elsewhere, the ability to enrage the Arab street is a modest source of Israeli leverage over Arab governments, who don’t need the extra tsuris. (They’d rather have extra tourists.).
We keep hearing about the “arab street”. The “arab street” is the most illiterate, ignorant, uneducated, racist, intolerant gene pool on earth. Propoganda and conspiracy theories run up and down the arab street more often than buses. Nothing the civilized western nations do can mollify the arab street. Consideration of what might inflame this aggregation is a waste of time and energy.
Hamas vowed to destroy Israel. Israel is destroying Hamas.
It doesn’t get more “proportional” than that.
Good for Israel.
RCAR, I didn’t address the University question because others had already answered it far, far better:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-would-israel-bomb-university-heres.html
Short answer: the Uinversity was also a prison for a kidnapped Israeli, a bomb laboratory, arsenal, terrorist safehouse, and launching point for terrorist attacks.
Any one of those made it a legitimate target.
J.
J – RCAR stands for railcar which is the only place he thinks Jews belong. It was not asking a serious question.
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J. Lichty Says:
January 5th, 2009 at 6:15 PM
J – RCAR stands for railcar which is the only place he thinks Jews belong. It was not asking a serious question.
JL, one other place, my house.
…hamas is an organization that not only celebrates the death of jews (and israelis) but actively seeks the death of jews (and israelis)…this is not arguable…
…the reason we should care about whether hamas or its supporters is….?
…by contrast, there are many, many israelis who have publicly declared their willingness to accept a ‘two state’ solution to the palestinian issue and who supported the withdrawal from gaza….and, not least, do not publicly or privately insist that the abolition of palestinians is essential to a just and lasting peace in the middle east…
…hamas – and maybe iran – have likely overplayed their hands…let’s see if they get busted by events spinning out of their control…
…speaking purely as an american, this is one of those times when i’m confident that the more people find out about hamas, the less sympathetic they’re going to be…
…if i was baby assad, i’d be making sure my military and my secret police were working overtime…
and, to be manipulative about it, the more ‘successful’ israel is perceived to be, the more ‘flexibility’ the new administration will have in asking favors of it…the more ‘successful’ hamas is seen to be, the weaker the new administration would be in seeking concessions or accommodations from it or iran…
that is to say, you ALWAYS have more influence with your friends than with your enemies…for this reason – and this reason alone – i’ll bet more than a handful of realpolitikers in the obama administration are praying (pun intended) that israel gives them a lot of room to work with,,,
Oh the horror, the loss to scholarship caused by the Israeli destruction of Gaza University! All those hard working scholars explicating why Jews are infidels who must be murdered. All those engineers devoted to making lightweight suicide bomb belts. Perhaps they can transfer to Oxford, or Columbia to continue their studies.
The sole contribution to scholarship of late from said creatures, consists of the dubious offerings of Edward Said.
So perhaps it would be a good thing for the moral and intellectual universe if the Israelis plastered additional Arab “universities.”
Of course even using the term “university” to describe a place of Arab higher education is a flat out joke.
The claim that Israel’s action will only enrage Hamas can also be countered if we think back to when Israel killed Sheik Yassin. People like Jack Straw(the Brits have worse foreign secretaries than we have Sec. of State) warned that this would lead to further acts of terrorism. Hamas promised revenge as its supporters gripped and waved pieces of Yassin’s bloody garments like talismans.
But what followed? A cessation of attacks as other Hamas leaders were in no rush to be martyrs.
The “arab street” is the most illiterate, ignorant, uneducated, racist, intolerant gene pool on earth. Propoganda and conspiracy theories run up and down the arab street more often than buses.
Like I say, the Jews hate the Arabs, the Arabs hate the Jews. Both sides are genocidal freaks.
So was that a Repairman Jack allusion?
Ok, can no longer avoid commenting. Great point, however as long as the fight between the Otherness and the Ally continues to threaten mankind with extinction or worse, these forays back and forth with limited military and political goals will have little effect on longterm security.