Wild emotions and historic, intolerant antagonism?? and cruelty, lust? of domination and moral certainty, purges and punishments in a silent dialogue of shattered statues.
When societies divide into tribes charged with vengeance? revolutionary and blind to the lessons of history, convinced that the past was irremediably bad, the destruction of common symbols is directed? thirsty for transcendence?? and the hunger for the sacred, and what begins with the destruction of the statues ends? with killing people.
When I serve the grandiose fantasies of tyrants like Ramses II, Iosif Vissarionovici Stalin or Saddam Hussein, the statues dominate? ?and intimidate?. When their function is benign, statues define and support our identity over time. They tell us who we are and who we are not. They are our beliefs, values and memories preserved in marble and stone. ?i în metal.
Hat?epsut (Thebes, Egypt )
Nero (Colchester, UK)
Athena (Palmyra, Syria)
Bamiyan Buddha Statues (Bamiyan, Afghanistan )
Hecate (Constantinople, Byzantine Empire)
Holy Virgin? of Caversham (Caversham, UK)
Huitzilopochtli (Tenochtitlan, Mexico)
Confucius ( Qufu, China)
Louis XV ( Paris, France)
Felix Mendelssohn (Leipzig , Germany)
Confederate Monument (Portsmouth, Virginia, USA)
Sir John A. Macdonald (Montreal, Canada)
Edward Colston (Bristol, UK)
Christopher Columbus (Caracas, Venezuela)
Cecil Rhodes (Cape Town, South Africa)
George Washington (Portland, Oregon, USA)
Joseph V. Stalin (Budapest, Hungary)< /span>
Yagan (Perth, Australia)< /p>
Saddam Hussein (Baghdad, Iraq)
BR Ambedkar (Vederanyam, India)
Frederick Douglass (Rochester, New York, USA)
Yes? we are unable to We share the events of the past or to we forget them, the chances of living a common future decrease rapidly. In measure? what do we descend into the spirals of hatred, increasingly difficult to unravel, do we mock the ideal of love?? of enemies, which I understand, simply, as respect for?? of the humanity of those with whom we do not agree, especially when we are in conflict with them. really if we manage to we agree on the essential historical facts, it is not at all certain that we will understand each other regarding their interpretation. Thus, memory reveals its true nature: a dance of discordant fragments, each piece? struggling to attach to a convenient painting, which it gives meaning to our past, present and future. UNESCO's hope to recover Bamian as a space where the partisan formation? of memory either exceeded? it only produces an abyss. It is the same abyss into which the destroyed statues fall.
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Author
Peter Hughes is a doctor of philosophy and a psychologist specialized in the study of the mechanism by which individuals fall prey? the madness of mobs. A radio journalist with great experience, he studied the extremes of human behavior, and the combination of academic knowledge? and careful observation of the real world and ensure? a perspective? unique? on the strange human beginnings, as old as the world, to destroy the symbols of the past.
He collaborated with the BBC, ABC Australia and signed numerous documentaries. He has published articles îin The Huffington Post, The Spectator, Quillette, Perspective Magazine, The New Statesman.