Weekly Column: Life Is Dangerous . . .

“Harken to me, now, ye men of Ithaca, to the word that I shall say.”

With these words an old man stood in the midst of other men and began to speak. In his epic poem, The Odyssey, the ancient Greek Homer described the older man with the following words, “Then in the midst up rose Mentor, the companion of noble Odysseus. He it was to whom Odysseus, as he departed in the fleet, had given the charge over all his house, that it should obey the old man, and that he should keep all things safe.”

The Odyssey was written around 800 B.C., but over 2,700 years later, the process of asking someone to accept the responsibility to “keep all things safe” has continued. Safety is an essential expectation of community.

The earliest ideas of the city must have developed with the idea of enhancing safety. Lewis Mumford reports that as early as 913, there were reports that “the building of fortresses and of walls around settlements was one of the chief activities of the King’s army.” The famous fall of the walls of the city of Jericho (perhaps the oldest continuously occupied city in the world) dates back to 1250 B.C. The rose-red “city of rock,” Petra, Jordan, the capital city of the Nabataean empire, provided a naturally walled and practically impenetrable enclosure for its occupants from the fifth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.

According to Mumford, the idea of a moat and walls keeping all things safe was effective until the fifteenth century. About that time, “new artillery made cities vulnerable” and their old form of defense “just made them more conspicuous targets.”

Much has changed in our cities since the days of Petra, Jericho, and Ithaca; yet surveys of contemporary society continue to indicate that keeping “all things safe” remains an essential expectation. Neighborhood policing and watch programs represent some of the recent attempts to enhance the degree of community safety.

On April 19, 1995 (14 years ago this week) cities everywhere were shockingly introduced into a new era of vulnerability. It happened in Oklahoma City at 9:03 a.m. – terror struck the heartland of America – and 168 men, women and children lost their lives.

City leaders everywhere were reminded of their Mentor-like responsibility to “keep all things safe” and how each member of the community must share in that responsibility if we are truly to enjoy the opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The responsibility we share for each other’s safety was refreshingly and succinctly captured in a billboard message. Having just landed in Sydney, Australia and taking the cab into town, I was confronted by a single six-word message: “Life is dangerous. Learn first aid.”