Occasionally, when the veneer of my being a civilized member of society is especially thin, I find myself sitting in traffic thinking “the only reason that justifies this foolishness is someone being mangled up there.” It’s usually followed by a quiet prayer that they broke something so the holdup isn’t just them being a particularly bad driver. Ninety-nine percent of the time, traffic is just jacked up because everyone wants to slow down and look at the guy changing his tire on the side of the road or because someone was texting and missed the guy in front of them laying on the breaks. The other 1% of the time, some schlep seriously misjudges the speed of oncoming traffic and ends up getting thrown 60 yards across a divided highway and plugging himself head first into a tree. I’d guess I missed that excitement by less than a minute. For a while tonight, I felt bad about wishing ill on the poor driver. Then I read a news report that he was a suspect in a robbery a few minutes earlier at a nearby store. I should probably still feel bad about another person’s suffering, buy all I can really think of at the moment is that sometimes karma doesn’t waste any time in getting even. Suddenly I find myself feeling less guilty.
Tag Archives: civilization
I don’t need your Civil War… (we’ve got our own anyway)
Today’s 150th anniversary commemoration of the beginning of the Civil War got me thinking – which is generally a dangerous proposition at the best of times. The war is long gone, faded into blurry photographs and dusty history books, but the issues it was fought over are as alive today as they were when the first shells burst over Ft. Sumter. Maybe we’re not arguing over who to count as three-fifths of a person or the legal status of people, but we’re certainly still trying o figure out the role of the federal government and where national power ends and state or local power begins. We’re fighting our battles today with words and budget appropriations, but it’s easy enough to squint your eyes and imagine how such a fight could devolve into canister shot and gunpowder.
It would be too easy to think the United States grew up in the last 150 years. The Union, such as it is, still stands after all – But are we really any closer to being able to have a civilized discussion about the hard issues that face us than were our predecessors? Take a long look at Fox News or MSNBC and then answer that question.
My God… It’s full of stars…
Note: This post was lifted directly from my notes on Saturday, March 31st. It is complete and unabridged.
It’s Saturday afternoon now and I am taking lunch on the Piazza della Signoria. Michelangelo walked here in this square. So did Galileo. So did Machiavelli. The Medici rose to power on the business flowing through this square. The Renaissance was born and flourished in these walls. This is the cradle of what is good and right about Western civilization… Of art, of science, of understanding what it means to be men. Someone wiser than I once said “If I see further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” It is how I feel here in this place. My own learning, my curiosity, and the desire for improve constantly find their own root here. In coming Florence and seeing these things and walking in the steps of the ponderously brilliant minds who lived and worked here I have a deeper understanding of myself and a far more humble perspective of my own meager talents.
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