I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a
war fought with the atomic bomb.
Albert Einstein
To most of us the Great Wall of China or St. Peter’s
Basilica are untouchable monoliths, built hundreds of years before we can even
imagine. They tower above the world, almost like they’re imaginary. This sense
of the untouchable is what makes something special. Things that hold this
innate power over our culture. It is these buildings that make our
civilizations last forever.
If we didn’t have the pyramids of Giza, would any of us
really care about the Ancient Egyptian society? How about the Greeks? The
Acropolis sits high on a hill, gazing down for thousands of years at its
subjects. Like a proud parent it stares down at the society it birthed and those
that came after. Even more poignant and famous is the Coliseum in Rome. Then
the iconic Tower Bridge, Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace guards in Britain.
Finally we make our way across the Atlantic to the U.S. Perhaps with the most
famous and iconic representation of a single civilization—the Statue of
Liberty.
When all of us are gone, our monuments will live on. Future generations
will stand at the feet of our Statue of Liberty, just as we stand at the base
of the Acropolis and the Great Wall. They will stare up into stony eyes and
wonder what possessed people to put the statue of a woman in the middle of the
ocean. It is from this wonder that our civilization will carry on forever. For
every person that sees that statue there will be another 10 who have heard of
it.
The next time you see a picture of a monument, or visit a
monument itself, think about what that piece of stone represents. Think about
how it defines our culture. Think about how it defines our civilization as we
know it. It doesn’t even have to be a monument. For instance, every time I walk
into a Chinese restaurant I think how weird it must be for people to think that
less than a hundred years ago nearly no one in America had ever tasted Chinese
food, now there’s a restaurant in nearly every city. Our civilization is built
up of all different kinds of people from all different kinds of cultures. This
is what truly sets our civilization apart from all the earlier great
civilizations. That is what will define our civilization for all eternity, just
like those monuments did for the Greeks and Romans.
This blog really made me think about how cultures have shaped the nation. Yes, i have thought of this before but not to the extent of a Chinese restaurant. I am currently employed at a Chinese restaurant and i frequently ask my boss about his heritage and how he was raised and am surprised to see that it is not much different than my own. I had never thought about how odd it would have seemed in the 1800's if you were to ask someone if they wanted to eat Chinese food, which I feel is odd because I ask what Chinese food people would want to order all of the time due to work. To think that had our cultures not clashed then I would not have met the people I had and my life would be extremely different.
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