Tragic, trivial share space, help us cope

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The tragic shares space with the trivial. It's how we cope. It's how we absorb what is: bitter coffee diluted with cream.

"Crisis in Kosovo" the computer reports, right next to "Roof leaking? Bank One - Home equity lines. Apply on-line before the flood." "Kosovo Albanians Forced to Help Lay Mines." "First USA Platinum VISA on AOL only." What to worry about? Life and death or low-interest loans?

It's surreal and therefore unreal. We shop while people drop. What are we supposed to do? A firefighter saved a crane operator from being burned to death in Atlanta Monday. It was on the news, caught on film, the heroic efforts of one man risking his life to save another. It was on the news, either before the pictures of a Yugoslav passenger train bombed by NATO or after, depending upon which television station you watched.

The best of man, the worst of man; the good, the bad and the ugly, presented side by side every day, day after day. We go to such great lengths to save one life. We airlift people to hospitals. We take the heart out of a dead man and rush it to a man who needs a heart, then pump him full of expensive drugs so that the new heart isn't rejected. Then we support and cheer him on. We're good at this. We will walk miles to raise money to fly sick children from anywhere to America where they can be cured. And after this war ends, we will walk for skin grafts and artificial limbs and aid for the needy because one by one, on an individual basis, we value human life.

But life on a larger scale? Our government is raining bombs on the Balkans and telling us that these are bombs for peace. Bombs will push Milosevic to his knees. Bombs will put an end to Milosevic's marauding.

A federal judge isn't the only one who should hold our president in contempt. Milosovic didn't hatch from an egg a few months ago. He didn't appear out of nowhere like some subterranean Lex Luthor. Milosevic's been strutting his stuff for years and what he's doing to Kosovo he did openly and brazenly to Sarajevo. But Clinton had other things on his mind then. He has always had his mind on other things.

We watch the Red Sox. We rake our lawns and our gardens. We make plans for April vacation and keep an eye on the stock market. But the war shadows and chills us. There is an old saying: Peace begets prosperity; Prosperity begets pride; Pride begets prejudice; Prejudice begets war: War begets poverty. This perhaps is the most tragic part of war, that we never learn. That at the end of this century in which we seem to have come so far, we have, again, gone nowhere.

Technologically we're definitely wizards. We win hands down in the category of "Century with the most change." We put a man on the moon. We cracked the genetic code. We can communicate with almost anyone, almost anywhere. We've cloned, conquered cyberspace, circumnavigated our way around the cell, the microbe, the atom and the world. We're amazing.

But morally we're fighting the same battles. We're stuck in the same primitive garden where we have always been, brutally clubbing each other to death, each in the name of right and honor and pride. The maneuvers never change. We never change. Only our weapons get more sophisticated. We never do.