We’ve been in Chicago (well, Wheaton) IL this week, and on Monday the Andersons and the Anderkoos swung by the Field Museum, which is currently hosting a blockbuster exhibit on Pompeii.
The exhibit itself was decent, perhaps surprisingly lackluster until you
realize that the Field is a museum of natural history, not social history
(though, despite our new post-colonial mores, “natural history” and
“culture” remain intertwined, as exhibits on Tibetan Buddhism attest).
The artifacts were laid out grouped according to location of find, with
narratives
attached that posit who their owners may have been and how they
probably
perished. Good storytelling, certainly.
Many of the exhibit’s stories
emphasized how the rich and poor perished alike (though the former left
behind more of the archaeological goodies). It seems that natural
disaster and human interest stories like to show how misfortune lays
low the mighty. The reality, of course, is that these stories are
captivating precisely because they are exceptional. The reality is
that, on average, the rich have better life chances and opportunities
than the poor. But whether for political expediency or personal schadenfreude,
we as human beings like to imagine that we are all equal in some
cosmic, kharmic sense. Economists love studying how easily the poor
become rich and the rich become poor as measures of the fairness of our
society. So long as hurricanes, epidemics, and other natural or
personal catastrophes strike us down equally, we feel society is fair.
But ask anyone why they are trying to save up money for themselves or
for their kids and you’ll quickly see that our personal belief
structure is quite at odds with Pompeii’s quaint morality tale.
