Our New Cathedrals

A colleague of mine and I were discussing last winter about the times in which we are living. We both teach American and Latin American studies, and our positions reflect our disciplines. I believed that we are in a new Gilded Age, where a few control most of the wealth and everything around us is painted with a thin and crumbling veneer. This is becoming a popular notion, as evidenced by the article "Age of Riches" earlier this month in the NY Times. My colleague posited that we are living in a new Baroque era, where like the cathedrals of the 17th century in Europe and Latin America, institutions today create so many distractions for people, it is hard to see truth.

I like her argument. After spending a couple of hours at SuperTarget a couple of days ago, it is easy to draw parallels between the baroque cathedrals I visited during my college study abroad in Spain and the megastores of today. So much visual stimulus and wonder evoked in both, where every inch of space is shiny, polished, decorated or plastered with items to grab your attention. Baroque cathedrals overwhelmed the eye in their attempt to convey the power of the Church and kill any rebellious or irreverent sentiment in the beholder. Megastores want to overwhelm the consumer with the feeling of necessity. The more anxiety and sense of dependency on the institution created in the hearts of human beings, the more they will be stewards of the status quo.

Baroque cathedrals in the 17th century and megastores in the 21st century reflect a symptom of a greater problem: the misappropriation of power and wealth in a society. Our own landscape of excess provides such a false sense of security that we often forget it is a facade, and that there are more sinister realities underneath.