Feildtrip: Jewish Quarter 12/07/2010

Inscription on a building in original hebrew

See the dents in the wall towards the bottom? People used to be executed at gunpoint against this wall.

If there is one thing that I am realizing about history in Barcelona it is that it has so many LAYERS!! Again, American history is pretty linear and straightforward, so seeing multiple influences in one area is really fascinating to me - Roman buildings replaced or next to Franco's buildings, seeing the remnants of multiple cultures in one area, and then to top it all off to see how it's all been so modernized and how we exist and are changing/adding/taking away from the layers of culture all around us. I think also part of why this is sinking in so much is because history is EVERYWHERE in this city - In America, anything important or old is sectioned off, turned into a tourist attraction and quarantined from ever being touched. Here, people interact with the history - they live and work in the old Roman buildings, they attend mass in the huge cathedrals, they drive their motorcycles through the tiny streets that were once built only to fit horses. That's what I noticed the most on this field trip - that the people here seem to have a much more casual relationship with their history, it's more integrated into their daily lives and their past strongly influences their present.

I sometimes wonder if this why people here in europe seem so much more grounded - they have centuries of influences, cultures, and lessons learned that have shaped the way they live and exist. This isn't to say that Americans don't, I just think that being so isolated from our European history has made us forget the most basic, almost primally human parts of ourselves in the name of progress and puritanism. Americans are afraid of everything - Sex, Food, Money, and so when those desires do express themselves, they usually do it in a way that's inappropriate. It's crazy to me that A young teen can watch some video girls shaking it on MTV wearing the absolute bare minimum while a man throws money on them and degrades them with his lyrics, but for that same young teen to see a movie in which two people in love express that physically with sex- which is normal and healthy, would be deemed inappropriate. Or, for example, that in a country as rich as America there are still millions of children living in hunger, while others are suffering the effects of complications from being so young and overweight. Everything is so moderate and integrated here. People seem to have a healthier relationship with themselves, their bodies, their desires. I'm learning from that.

And I'm also realizing that in America's puritan attempt to squelch our most basic human desires, we're merely give rise to the very perversions that we are afraid of.