New Seven Wonders of the World

http://www.new7wonders.com

Here’s an initiative (started by a Canadian!) to designate seven new wonders of the world. Over the last few years or so they had a long list of great monuments, and with a series of runoff-elections they’ve narrowed it down to 21. The last runoff vote is in progress. You can vote online, right now, for free. I voted for:

The Acropolis, Athens, Greece,
The Alhambra, Granada, Spain.
Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
The Colliseum, Rome, Italy
The Eiffel Tower, Paris, France
Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
Stonehenge, England.

Pass this web site on to all the pagans you know: let’s make sure that the Pagan monuments on the list, like Stonehenge, are named to the final list of Seven Wonders!

I love architecture: I almost entered an architecture program at university (but chose drama instead, because I decided I didn’t want to do the math). Even so, I still have a few books on architectural design and aesthetics on my philosophy shelf. my favourite is the Ethical Function of Architecture, by Karsten Harries. I sure wish I had written it! (Oh, and I met the author, once, when he was on a philosophical lecture tour.)

One of my long-term, life goals, is to some day build some kind of monument: an obelisk or tower, or a grand temple / theatre / concert hall, or something like it. Also to design the landscaping and gardens surrounding it. Also to be buried in it, but that’s another story.

This new Wonders of the World initiative got me thinking. If pagans today had enough labour power and money, and could build a monument of our own on the scale of grandeur and magnificence implied by “a wonder of the world”, what would it look like? What kind of building would it be? Would it be a magnificent temple, a palace, an observatory, a collosal statue, or a complex of various buildings, or something else? Would it be a functional building, or would it be wholly aesthetic? What kind of social order would we have to have, in order to decide what to build, and to marshal the labour and resources to build it?