Pompeii

We recently went to the Field Museum downtown Chicago to check out the new special exhibit called "Pompeii: Secrets from an Eruption." The exhibit was interesting and informative but rather small. Some of the highlights included a digital re-creation of some of the villas in Pompeii and Herculaneum (a nearby city), and several plaster and resin casts of people who had been buried under the surges from Mt. Vesuvius. The bodies were positioned exactly how they were when the surge came down from the mountain in AD 79. It really was quite fascinating. A major emphasis of the exhibit, however, focused on the wealth of Pompeii as evidenced by the possessions found on or near the dead bodies. Elaborate necklaces, earrings, and bracelets were found along with ornate rings and statuettes of gods or goddesses. These valuables and trinkets did not just happen to be on the people when they died. After the initial rain of ash, the Pompeiians had gone back to their homes to retrieve all of their "valuables" and then they were caught unawares by the sudden deadly surges of gas and ash. Basically, their insatiable greed caused their demise. It's interesting what you can learn about a culture when an entire city is destroyed in less than a day. All of this talk about personal valuables and impending disaster led me to think about what our culture would go back for if we were on the brink of destruction. It's that age-old question of what you would take if your house was on fire. Maybe it's our iPods or our video games or some other "valuable" trinket. How many of us would go back to try to help as many people as possible? I can't help but see so many parallels between our culture today and the culture of the "heathen" Pompeiians who worshiped their money, their gold, and their sexual eroticism. Sometimes I fear for this country and what people will say about us in thousands of years. Will we be another Pompeii, buried with our most precious possessions that take us nowhere?