Austerity gone wrong reveals cultural bleakness in search for better quarter
More and more, you can see that the priorities of world leaders are selfish, irresponsible, and driven by capitalism. The underfunding of the world’s most important public institutions can cause irreparable and devastating damages. It’s time to take a serious look at our priorities.
Last week’s fire at the 200-year-old Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil caused 2,000 years’ worth of work, cultural heritage, and history to burn to ash. The cause is still unknown.
Among the lost artifacts are many pre-historic fossils and skeletons, a painted Egyptian sarcophagus, and traditional paintings and artifacts from indigenous Brazilian cultures, according to The Atlantic. The oldest human remains ever found in the Americas, called Luzia, have also been lost.
Perhaps the most hurtful aspect of this tragedy is that so many people saw the disaster coming. Officials say that the fire was “bound to happen” due to the disrepair the museum had fallen into in recent years, according to an interview with the New York Times. the New York Times also reported, that the museum’s staff had been seeing problems with infrastructure and fire suppression since the 1950s and began planning to repair these shortcomings.
Unfortunately, the museum couldn’t get the funding. In the 200 years since it was built, the building had never seen a full renovation.
The past five years involved severe cuts to funding, which forced the museum to crowdfund the repair of a termite infestation, and to only have “a couple of fire extinguishers” as their fire suppression system.
Firefighters who appeared on the scene reported that the nearby fire hydrants came up dry and had to tap water from a nearby lake to put out the flames. This, in addition to the complete lack of a fire suppression system in the building, amounted to an embarrassing fault in institutional funding and a memorable feat for idiocracy.
Institutions like the Museu Nacional and the history that they preserve define us as human beings. This museum was the oldest scientific museum in Brazil and is now reduced to ash.
Is this finally a wake-up call concerning the importance of scientific institutions, or just an instance in a long line of fatal mistakes?
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons