When cathedrals and manor houses become museums and billboards, open to “the public” (for a fee), but closed to being an integral part of our individual, personal lives their beauty becomes ugly, garish, and unnecessary.
They no longer belong to us.
They are just objects to be looked at, not spaces to play and pray in.
No wonder those left outside, to look without touching, want to burn them down.
Beauty that lies apart from rather than is a part of life is tacky and cheap. (Like jewellery too expensive to be worn and cars too precious to drive and wine to old to drink should be stolen and used!)
We deserve futures where beautiful public spaces and places and things live with us, here and now, and not only as relics of a forgotten, overwritten past. Otherwise, we should melt them down.