It is easy today to find examples of things that are simply marvels of human invention and brilliance. The everyday cellphone today is a pretty amazing instrument, considering all that one can do. This past week, I had a chance to see an exhibit of replicas of the items that were found in the tomb of Tutankhamun.
What I find remarkable are the incredible effort, skill, and resources that were put into respecting Tutankhamun. At so early a period in history, people gathered and used a simply massive quantity of gold, masterfully designed and adorned, to pay homage to a ruler who died quite young, Tutankhamun. Tut’s tomb featured countless treasures (ok, there were a little over 700), besides the multiple nested shrines, each of which protected yet another shrine of gold-leaf covered wood. Ultimately, inside the larger gold-covered shrines there was an incredible whole piece of carved alabaster, which contained several solid gold nested sarcophagi.
When I try to imagine the skill of the craftsmen of Tut’s day, I marvel already at what people were able to do so many thousands of years ago. There are periods in human history when people were capable of simply amazing feats. The entombment of Tutankhamun is a great example of what people were capable of doing back when tools were at their most limited in recorded history.
On the one hand, the objects and artworks surrounding Tut are enormously enjoyable to look at and think about, given their beauty and the craftsmanship that had to go into them. For instance, it was amazing to see in the furniture included in Tut’s tomb some dovetail joints, that are still woodworking methods that we use today.
On the other hand, when you think about historical artworks, it is important to remember how many people died in their creation. Or, how people were taxed enormously without any kind of representative government, so that the people in power could fund wars, monuments, and solid-gold sarcophagi. It is hard to imagine such times — even if England does still have a queen.
Thousands of years ago, people were capable of creating outstandingly beautiful golden artworks, paying respect to a deceased ruler. It is hard not to marvel at what human beings were capable of accomplishing, even so long ago and with such modest, early tools.
Today is National Adjunct Walkout Day, but instead of participating I’ll walk-in to the Jessup Correctional Institution and I won’t walk-out until my class and other responsibilities are done. Mostly that’s because I think the adjunct problem is less important than the mass incarceration problem, and my students would be worse off if I decided to stay home. I’d be a cad to complain to them about my plight, in any case: they make less than a dollar a day, if they’re lucky enough to get jobs at all. But my situation is probably a bit unique: most students won’t complain if their teachers cancel class. They consider themselves better off when we stay home.
But what’s really at work is adverse selection: chasing great schools, the middle class follow each other from the city to the suburbs and back again, and from neighborhood to neighborhood within the city.
