The Tragedy Did Not Occur on September 11th, 2001.

varkam | 2006-04-13 15:47

I posted this over at Democratic Underground a while back:

Quote:

It happened several months following it. I can't pinpoint the day, maybe not even the week or the month. I don't think it was a sudden sort of thing, but much more gradual progression. It didn't announce itself with a roar, like the carnage wrought on us that day - it came without a sound. There were no explosions, and there was no screaming. People did not have confused expressions on their faces, caked with soot and dirt. Rather, it was a day like any other. We were driving to the little league game, sipping our Frappuccinos, and banging out another manuscript on our laptop.

It struck me, that in the hours following the attacks, that something very deep and powerful had occurred. What struck me was the notion that, from all the death and destruction, from the final minutes of those 3,000 people and the last phone calls home, something good could come from the madness. All of a sudden, the lines of distinction to which I and so many others had become accustomed to had vanished. Republican. Democrat. Libertarian. Black. White. Hispanic. Christian. Muslim. Atheist. Poor. Rich. Young. Old. Fat. Skinny. Beautiful. None of it mattered. They had all been taken from us by the acts of a few extremists who were warped by hatred and ideology. All that was left was a single world - American. We had all suffered. We bore witness to the unfathomable depths of the dark side of humanity. We all saw the towers come down, and we all mourned. I remember reading about an article entitled "New York Drops It's Game Face": complete strangers were hugging one another on the street, asking if they needed anything. Solidarity. Yeah, that's the word. And it moved me to tears, more so than the attacks themselves. For my money, the solidarity that arose from the remains of the WTC was one of the most beautiful things I had seen or been a part of.

The road signs went up. Everyone and their mother bought an American flag. Donations of material, blood and money poured in. Everyone wanted to help. These were not strangers that were suffering. These were our brothers, our sisters, our mother and our fathers - and we loved them just as dearly. Then, as time dragged on in the way that it does, things returned to normalcy. The McDonalds down the street took the "We will not forget" sign off the reader-board and replaced it with "McRib is Back!". Donations fell. Blood was in short supply. And everyone put an American flag sticker on the back of their car - as if that would suffice for compassion, thought, and action.

We had deja-vu during the past hurricane season. We all saw the images of the poor, the destitute, stranded. Starving and dehydrated. We all saw the rage and the destruction. The suffering and the death. Again, all of us felt compelled to help our brothers, our sisters, mothers and fathers. Our fellow Americans. Donations again poured in. People went in droves to lend their time and their bodies to the efforts and solidarity came again. This time not from the hatred that dwells in men's hearts, but the wrath of mother nature. I thought, perhaps this time it will stick. Perhaps this time, we will remember that that stranger on the other side of the street is not a stranger at all, but one who is intricately connected to our very lives.

And of course, that time has passed once more. I find myself wondering why. I wonder why it has to be this way. Why we have to go back to driving to little league games or sipping Frappuccinos or banging out another manuscript on our laptop. Perhaps some of you are thinking that I'm being too unreasonable - that I expect people to mourn or to think about such things all the time. I do not. But it seems that we are constantly educated through pain and we forget the lessons it teaches us with similar frequency. That is why I say the real tragedy did not occur on September 11th, 2001 - as I, for one, mourn the passing of solidarity.

I'm giving it a reprise here for two reasons: 1) It's not often that I write something I'm proud of and 2) I've been thinking about the second part of the puzzle since then; namely, what is the mechanism by which this occurs?

Before I get to that though, I want to hammer home the point that I do think this is a problem - it's why the Pakistanis are still freezing and we're still finding bodies in NOLA. Don't get me wrong here. I think that, as Americans, we are generally some of the most compassionate and generous people on the face of the planet - our government has contributed about 294 million dollars for the tsunami recovery effort, accorting to the UN Office of the Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery, and much more has been raised by private citizens like you and me. When push comes to shove, I feel that most of us are compelled to help if for no other reason than to alleviate suffering in others. But donations have fallen, and so have warm bodies. That does not bode well for people in need.

I think this is important. If I'm on the right track here and this is a problem, then taking steps to find the source can mean saving a lot of lives. A lot of lives. Therefore, I think that at least this is a topic worthy of discussion. I know I can't speak for other countries or other cultures (as I've been born and raised in 'western' cultures), but I have been thinking since I made the original post (or to put it more aptly, the original-original post) about what such a mechanism might be. I've reached one solid conclusion in my thoughts, and that is this: if there is a problem here, it's likely to complex and have multiple factors involved. This, I feel, makes the need for discussion all the more urgent. Here are a few possible contributing factors:

Cultural Tradition

As Americans, we pride ourselves on our rugged individualism. I don't mean to say that all Americans do, and I'm not commenting on the morality of that philosophy either - but I think everyone would have to agree that this is a country steeped in 'boot-strap' ideology. There is this popular notion that the 'self-made wo/man' deserves respect, and that we should all aspire to behave or strive to behave in a similiar fashion. What I'm wondering, with respect to cultural tradition, is that do we come to a stop when we hit that 'self-made' status? In other words, does that philosophy lend itself to isolationism? If so, then I think that our collective cultural tradition might be a factor. But, to be more clear here, I don't intend to mean that people who actually are 'self-made' are by nature callous or anything of the sort. I'm referring to the notion on an individual level, but more on a macro-social level.

Media

Did you hear TomKat is having a baby? I did - about 50 times since last week. You have to admit the state of celebrity worship and the media in general in this country (and elsewhere, probably) is getting a bit absurd. Did you know that 65 million people voted in least season's American Idol? I do, I just wish I could forget that worthless piece of info. But I'm not going to start ripping on "reality" (note the emphasis on the quotes) TV. Content aside, the sheer amount of information available to us is also staggering; CNN, NBC, ABC, Faux, BBC, Reuters, AP, NYT, and Happy News just to name a few. That's not even counting the blogosphere and the innumerable other 'alternative' news outlets. In fact, a new word has recently entered the American lexicon: infobesity. I'm sure you can figure out what that means.

Is it the case that the state of mass media actually helps to propel the phenomenon in question? It seems intuitively appealing to me that it would - and through no fault of our own. The newest disaster is on the next channel - just a news cycle away. How can we be expected to give our unmitigated attention to reconstruction efforts in NOLA when TomKat is going into labor (which, by the way, is the next disaster)?

Psychological Characteristic(s)

Perhaps the answer is much simpler, and much more indellible. Is this just who we are, as post-modern humans? Are we just stuck in a continuous cycle of 'channel surfing'? This is probably the most jaded approach to take, but after giving it some though, I think it might be the most plausible. We don't like dwelling on the horrors in the world - of which there are a number. I think this is probably the motivation underlying many people's response when I bring this issue up. This is a confusion, however. It's not that I hope people should live in a continuous state of shock, as we all did when the WTC towers came down - but it is that I hope we can act and continue to act. Right now we seem to excell at sprinting short distances. I want to know why we're not going cross-country, so to speak.

In conclusion, I want to say that I'm guilty of it too. I don't mean to imply that I'm better or more generous than anyone else - I recently bought a new $300.00 (I'm a cheap-ass) suit when I could have given that money to UNICEF. But I do recognize that that money could have been spent to save lives. That's an uncomfortable conclusion to come to, for me at least. Maybe it's that we don't want to sacrifice our quality of life for the sake of saving actual life - but at the same time we recognize that actual life is more important (at least in many cases) than quality of life. Holding those two contradictory claims in your mind at once creates some dissonance, without a doubt. If that's the case, then this might just be the first piece of a very large puzzle - as what to do about the source of such puttering out, I fear, will be infinitely more complicated.

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