Tragedy Is When It Directly Affects ME...

In the misfortunes of our best friends we find something not altogether displeasing to us.

Pretty cynical view, huh?  Surely casts human nature in a fairly damning light, and has since Francois de La Rochefoucauld put the thought to paper in the mid 1600s.  The Germans have a term for it:  Schadenfreude, which literally translates in English to "Harm-Joy."  And I'm gonna guess that most of us, if we really looked deeply and honestly inside ourselves, would have to acknowledge the existence of such feelings lurking there.

I wonder, though, if there's a term for the opposite; when witnessing or hearing about the misfortunes of others, isn't it also pretty much human  nature to say, or at least to think, "That's nothin'.  You think you've got it bad?  Lissen to this...."  Seems like we tend to play up our own misfortunes while pooh-poohing others' troubles as though our travails were a badge of honor, theirs a mere inconvenience:  my hangnail's way worse than your broken arm.

I started thinking about this last week when we hit a little glitch in the project I'm working on.  The house we're building was sited according to information provided by the seller, and it turned out that, rather than meeting all setbacks and being safely nestled on the lot, the house was actually half on the new owners' property, half off: exactly, neatly, diagonally bisected.  It surely caused some consternation and a flurry of communication between lawyers, but in the end was resolved in one day.  After the initial "holy shit"s and hand wringing, it was no biggie, really. Makes for a good story, though.  While it was happening, though, it was a flat-out crisis.

Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time With..., got himself into quite a lot of controversy this week by downplaying the Boston Marathon bombings and the whole "Boston Strong"  movement, as regards the Red Sox victory parade:  "It was a bad day; 3 people were killed,  many were maimed, and that's horrible, but your city didn't get leveled by Godzilla."  On the face of it, that's very cold, callous, even cruel;  on the other hand, all one need do is listen to any newscast or read any newspaper on any day and discover far worse tragedies happening somewhere on the globe, generally in the Middle East.  People are killed by the dozens every day by suicide- or car-bombers, in pitched battles, in drone strikes (oops), and we pay virtually no heed.  Shocking as Maher's statement is, it should at the very least provoke some thought, if not discussion, some reflection and perspective, rather than simply reflexive outrage. To the poor sod the tree falls on, it's tragic; for the rest of us, maybe not so much.  Perhaps that's how it has to be, and maybe we are all islands.

This week, songs of crisis, tragedy, catastrophe, trouble and fortune, to wit:

Crisis                                                                        Bob Marley & The Wailers
Crisis                                                                        Poncho Sanchez
The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis Of A Co-Ed     Dar Williams
Tragic Magic                                                            NRBQ
Tragic Magic                                                            Traffic
Tragedy                                                                    Emmylou Harris
Tragedy In Waiting                                                  OAR
Perspective Changes                                                Tommy Flanagan
I Me Mine                                                                 Fabs
Catastrophe Rag                                                       Rory Block
Fortunate Fool                                                          Jack Johnson
Fortunate Son                                                           Bruce Hornsby
Fortunate Son                                                           Creedence
How Fortunate The Man With None                        John Martyn

There But For Fortune                                             Phil Ochs
Fortune                                                                     Carla Olsen and Mick Taylor
No More Trouble                                                     Bob Marley
Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen                    Grant Green
So Much Trouble In The World                               Bob Marley & The Wailers
Trouble                                                                     Bob Dylan
Trouble                                                                     The Jayhawks
Trouble                                                                     Robert Palmer
Trouble And Strife                                                   Bela Fleck & The Flecktones
Trouble, You Can't Fool Me                                    Ry Cooder
The Trouble With Normal                                       Bruce Cockburn
Trouble No More                                                     Allman Bros.
Trouble Blues                                                          Sam Cooke
Trouble In Mind                                                      Mose Allison
Trouble Soon Be Over                                             Geoff Muldaur

Next Week:  Home for the holidays--and Arlo, of course.

See you on the radio, Tuesdays from noon til two on wool.fm.