|
MAIN MENU |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The 21st Century Announces Itself |
Letters at 3AM
September 21, 2001:
"New York, the capital of the 20th century" -- so Norman
Mailer once described his city.
The proof is in the architecture. In the 1930s there was
no skyline like New York's. By the
1990s the New York skyline, and the way of life that goes
with it, was mirrored by every
major city in the world. The Manhattan-style skyscraper
became the most visible global
symbol of economic and political power, and New York became
the nerve center of
humanity's commerce. On September 11, two great buildings
of the world's economy,
New York's tallest, 110 stories high ... we watched them
collapse, dissolve, in mere
seconds. The intended symbolism could not be more clear:
What was strong in the 20th
century is fragile in the 21st; what seemed invulnerable
is vulnerable; the very things that
were designed by our strength, and for our convenience,
can be transformed into the
implements of our destruction. The World Trade Center
and the Pentagon -- the 21st
century has announced its terms by successfully assaulting
two prime symbols of the
20th. Daily American life, from now on, will require a
far greater capacity to endure
uncertainty and fear. We don't yet know if the American
dream, with its cocky mix of
audacity and naiveté, can remain viable amidst
the forces of chaotic instability that seem
to be the 21st century's signature.
Granted that the World Trade Center, as architecture, expressed
the buildings' functions
all too well -- those monolithic rectangles were crude,
massive, unimaginative
expressions of raw selfish power. But those buildings
were inhabited by individuals who,
like most people, were trying to resolve the contradictions
of their dreams within the
humble, difficult, never-finished task of earning one's
keep and doing one's best. How
much love, and effort, and laughter, and hate, and regret,
and bravery, and longing, and
cowardice, and certainty, and dullness, and ambivalence,
and sweetness, and greed,
and illusion, and generosity, and truth, and memory, above
all, their private special
memories ... how very much died with each one of those
people that day.
And the deluded cruelty of the terrorists -- that too is
part of us. For it is also human to
believe passionately and mercilessly; to sacrifice oneself
for an ideal, and to blind
oneself to the grotesque results; more than anything,
it is horribly human to fail to see the
Other as equally valid, equally human. And how much delusion
and cruelty will these
terrorists, in turn, generate? On the night of September
11, even a man I value very
highly spoke in the most extreme terms of annihilating
Islam. Horror begets horror. For it
is also human, in times of crisis, to allow the lowest
and ugliest to set the terms. So
Hitler set the terms by which America justified the atomic
incineration of a quarter-million
civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No nation that committed
such atrocity can claim a
moral high ground on terrorists. Which cannot excuse anyone's
terrorism against our
innocents. None of it is justified. And that is human
too: to become so intoxicated with
the unjustifiable that our very intoxication becomes our
justification. How terrible can be
the allure of the unspeakable, and how human it is to
surrender to that allure.
It remains to be seen, as I write, what America will do.
A military response is essential,
but it brings to bear an ancient question: How can justice
be balanced by mercy? If we
fail in justice, we cannot survive. If we fail in mercy,
it won't matter whether we survive.
As was said by the prophet whom we name as the fount of
our civilization: "What does it
get you, if you gain the whole world but lose your soul?"
So America is about to be
tested, and to test itself, by the form and extent of
the unquestionably necessary violence
to which we must resort. What America does now will set
the tone and pace for the
history of the next 50 years.
In Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching,
the 31st passage reads:
"Weapons are the tools of fear; a decent man will avoid
them except in the direst
necessity, and, if compelled, will use them only with
the utmost restraint. Peace is his
highest value. If the peace has been shattered, how can
he be content? His enemies are
not demons, but human beings like himself. He doesn't
wish them personal harm. Nor
does he rejoice in victory. How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of
men? He enters a battle gravely, with sorrow and great
compassion, as if he were
attending a funeral." And yet fury also is necessary or
you cannot win. Such a paradox
used to be called "the human condition." We are learning
again that all our sciences, all
our achievements, have not and will not free us from the
condition that we are
contradictory beings who cannot satisfy one need without
denying or giving short shrift to
another and equally essential need.
Is a national response within the Tao Te Ching's terms
possible? Of course. Acting
with great audacity and compassion during the Cuban Missile
Crisis, the Kennedy
administration faced the gravest threat and prevailed
with virtually no violence -- though
they were ready for the greatest extreme of violence if
their gambit failed.
Is such a national response likely now? As the firefighters
and police of New York City
proved, rising nobly to the occasion is also one of the
great human possibilities, and we
cannot prejudge that possibility for any leader, especially
our own. But no action will
solve for very long the dilemma we find ourselves in.
It would be delusional to think
there's some ultimate solution. No matter what we do,
the 21st century has announced
itself in the starkest conceivable terms by how quickly,
on September 11, we accepted
this fact:
We know we're at war, but we don't know precisely with whom.
That's the 21st century.
But even though we identify the perpetrators and supporters
of these gruesome acts,
and even if we destroy them, our satisfaction will be
temporary. It is one thing to war
against a nation, for you can defeat a nation; it is quite
another to war against a
subculture, a movement that spans many nations and cannot
be ultimately confined or
pinned down -- a movement that uses the very instruments
we've invented and depend
upon: weapons, communications, financial arrangements,
and tactics concocted by the
ingenuity of the West. The biological, chemical, and atomic
devices that we fear most in
the hands of others -- they are our creations. And the
fact that others can wield them is
the result of our greed, arrogance, and shortsightedness.
This does not in any way
mitigate the moral culpability of our adversaries; but
it is a fact as a much as a metaphor
that they threaten us with the devices of our own paranoia
and ambition. And that, too, is
the 21st century.
Whether it is global warming or terrorism on the monstrous
scale of the World Trade
Center, the fundamental dynamic of the 21st century has
announced and revealed itself:
The underlying enemy of the Western nations will be the
chaotic unleashing of the very
forces that the West so proudly and hopefully created.
Insofar as those forces were the
expression of our selves, we will be fighting ourselves.
For our adversaries, on their own,
have invented nothing that could touch us. If we are wounded
again (and we almost
surely will be); if we are somehow defeated (and even
that is a possibility) -- it will be by
the tools we created and the forces we unleashed.
That, above all, is the 21st century.
At present, most of humanity lives in poverty and ignorance,
under the constant threat of
violence. Roughly three out of five children receive no
education at all; these kids have
no way of investigating propaganda, and are easily molded.
We will not be safe until they
are. Until they've achieved a modicum of security, education,
and prosperity, they'll have
every reason (emotionally if not logically) to hate us,
and no reason not to attack us. We
are learning the terror of fighting an adversary who has
nothing to lose. Until they have
more to lose than their lives, they're not going to quit.
Which is why the satisfactions of
retaliation will be fleeting -- however necessary retaliation,
at the moment, certainly is.
Killing one of their leaders and a thousand of his followers
won't change the basic
equation. Nothing can ultimately "win" but a foreign policy
that has as its ultimate goal the
well-being of the disenfranchised. Until that is achieved,
it is only human for the wretched
of the earth to take satisfaction in making our lives
equally wretched -- and we've given
them the tools to do so.
Fear and rage are natural but beside the point -- for acting
out of fear and rage will only
increase the chaos. What is necessary is vision, compassion,
and courage. Nothing
else can meet and tame the dragon-like energies of the
21st century.
Is this the first event of World War Three, a war unlike
any before, to be fought in ways
unlike any before? It may be. As I write I feel like I'm
whispering, because in such a time
all words that are not shouted feel like whispers -- small
breaths of sound spoken in the
dark, their meanings tentative and incomplete. It is very
late, it may be too late, but still I
propose a toast and raise my glass:
To the compassionate and brave.
|
Return to "9-11" Menu |
|
MAIN MENU |
|
|
|
NETWORK |
|