machines that dissolve chaos

I watched a short clip by Jason Silva over the weekend, where he comments on the role of sacred spaces and architecture, like cathedrals, churches, mosques, temples and the like.

He, as a  non-religious person, described them as machines, tools, mechanisms to handle chaos,  that the sacred place, therefore, calls you out of chaos and into stillness. He marvels at how humans managed to build such structures and institutions that help us deal with chaos, uncertainty, anxiety and fulfil our need for transcendence.

I love cathedrals, they are designed to help you transcend, to lift you up and out of yourself, to direct your gaze, even for just a moment to something else.

Makes me wonder which way the world will go, with all this chaos, complexity and uncertainty, where will we direct our gaze? Do we have the tools to handle what's coming, what is in fact already here?

There are some great gifts in our past, and in an anti-religious world, my call is that perhaps we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Get skin in the game, transcend.

Pierre