TRAGEDY

by William H. Benson

July 18, 2002

     On July 18, 64 A.D. a fire started in the Circus Maximus in the city of Rome that raged for the next nine days and laid half of Rome in ruins.  The story goes that Nero, the emperor, from a safe place had watched the fire and played his fiddle and then recited a poem that described the burning of Troy.  The Romans initially blamed him, not for starting the fire, but for not caring.

     But then another story began circulating that he, in fact,  had deliberately started the fire so that he might see what a burning city looked like.  And so later he caught the blame.

     Historians agree that Nero actually was on holiday in the country when the fire erupted and that he quickly returned to the city where he directed crews of firefighters, threw open certain grounds of his palace to refugees, set up tents and huts, and then imported cheap food.

In other words, he did what he could to overcome the fire’s tragic outcome.

     But the people of Rome detested Nero, for they understood he was cruel and murderous.  He had plotted the murder of his own mother, Agrippina.  He had divorced his wife, Octavia, charging her with adultery, and then he had sent the executioners.  Guilty of such heinous crimes, starting a fire, the Roman citizens believed, would be well within his character.

     Fearful of losing the people’s support, Nero, in turn, blamed the fire on the Christians, members of a new religion, and so he had them rounded up and fed to the lions in stadiums filled with cheering crowds.  And he then conducted wholesale crucifixions.  Accused of a tragedy, Nero blamed the innocent, and so that summer his viciousness rapidly expanded.  

     The summer of 2002 has been a summer of tragedy: a drought which created conditions that erupted in forest fires in Colorado and Arizona, and then in a bizarre reversal, heavy rains produced flooding in areas of Texas and nearby in Keith County, Nebraska. 

     Without the necessary snowfall last winter and without the rains this spring, the high country lay exposed and vulnerable, and inevitably the wild fires began.  The Iron Mountain fire burned nearly 88 homes.  And then in June the Coal Seam blaze flared up near Glenwood Springs.  And then Hayman exploded, choking Denver on smoke, threatening homes and property in the foothills.  Then, the Missionary Ridge fire near Durango ran wild. 

     “This is the worst fire year in Colorado history,” said Ralph Campbell, a state forester.

     Indeed, as of June 30 the Hayman fire had consumed 137,760 acres, and Missionary Ridge 71,739 acres–the first and second biggest wild fires in Colorado’s history.

     And then another fire in Arizona riveted the nation’s attention.

     The physical world, sometimes called Mother Nature, plays havoc on human beings’ intentions, and when she destroys property or human life, we label her handiwork a tragedy.  Besides drought, fire, and flood, humanity groans under her other tricks–hailstorms, tornadoes, typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanoes.  And then there are the tragedies devised by human beings.

     Whenever a tragedy strikes and for whatever reason, it is then Human Nature to fix the blame upon another person or persons.  We want to capture and possess a culprit, get a conviction, and then lock him or her away.  In so doing, society punishes the evil doer, and supposedly brings a measure of harmony into the community.

     Mother Nature acts, and Human Nature reacts.  Suffering under a tragedy, one can never be sure how individual behavior will be directed, but normally accusation and blame play a part.

     What do we do when tragedy strikes?  What do we do when we discover we have a life-threatening disease or when we are the victim of a crime or when we suffer from an accident or when we watch as suicide pilots fly into buildings or as terrorists blow themselves up on a bus?  Do we lash out with blame?  Do we work, in turn, to harm the guilty?  Do we fight, or do we yield?  How do we as intelligent and civilized human beings properly respond to the ugliness of a tragedy?  There are no easy answers.

     All tragedies tear gaping holes in people’s lives, and the walking wounded frantically search to replace that emptiness.  The quick fix is to blame somebody.

    The Romans said that Nero played his fiddle, and Nero said that the Christians started the fire.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

by William H. Benson

July 4, 2002

     On July 4, 1845 Henry David Thoreau declared his independence and moved into a cabin beside Walden Pond.  Almost 28 years old, for the next two years and two months he lived at Walden Pond to experience his own vision for a better life.

     “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

     Others in Concord, Massachusetts considered Thoreau an oddball, an eccentric, lazy, without a sense of responsibility, or any ambition.  Ralph Waldo Emerson, who owned the cabin and the land around Walden Pond, thought Thoreau was wasting his talents.  He could not understand why Henry chose to spend so much time outside.  Emerson wrote of Thoreau, “Instead of being the head of American engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party.” 

     Thoreau refused to marry.  One girl, Sophie Ford, who worked in Emerson’s home, asked Thoreau to marry her, but fearful of any infringement upon his own freedom, he politely said no.

     Thoreau owned nothing and further did not want to own anything.  He borrowed the ax that he took with him to Walden Pond.  Educated at Harvard, he simply never applied his talents by pursing a job, other than as a handyman and gardener for Emerson.

     Living at Walden Pond he divided his time between his vast bean garden and his writing, for it was there that he wrote Walden, in which he argued his own philosophy to simplify life.  He scorned public opinion and refused to accept the common definition of success.  For him liberty and the pursuit of happiness meant no attachments to anyone–male or female, or to anything.  “I thrive best on solitude,” he wrote in his journal.

     He attuned himself to nature.  Ralph Waldo Emerson loved to walk with Thoreau about Walden Pond because Thoreau knew the names of all the birds, animals, trees and flowers that they encountered. 

     And Thoreau considered government absolutely unnecessary.  “That government is best which governs least, . . . or which governs not at all.”  He refused to pay his poll tax and spent a night in jail.  Where Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and Franklin had argued for a political liberty and a public independence, Thoreau insisted upon a personal liberty and a private independence.

     It is a slim minority of Americans who are so constituted that they can live without any ties to a wife or a husband, to a family, a home, a job, a business, a community, or to a government.  The few able-bodied people who accept assistance and charity without a sense of shame we label “bums”, or we see them standing in lines at soup kitchens, or we find them living in a cardboard box under a bridge.  Critics label Thoreau’s ideas as “parasitic” upon society.

     Thoreau’s philosophy if extended to a majority of Americans would result in anarchy, for we in America are everything that he was not.  Our society’s fabric and structure demands ambition and hustle and drive and a desire to own and get ahead of others.  America wants families and home ownership.  His message to simplify our lives by living alone, close to nature, and to strive for a personal liberty falls on deaf ears today.

     And yet, some of the things he wrote still strikes.  “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  “It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”  “There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.”  “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I call evil.”  “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”

     The Fourth of July for most Americans means independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and for Henry David Thoreau it also meant those same things but in his own way and upon his own terms.

     And so he ends Walden: “The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.  Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  There is more day to dawn.  The sun is but a morning star.”

     Have a great Fourth of July!