The tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks is upon us, and I find myself vividly recalling that moment. Each of us has our own story of where we were, who we were with, and the horror we felt that Summer morning. This piece is not about my story, as it is not remarkable in any sense except to me. It is, rather, about the curious aftermath of 9/11.
Two things strike me about the first two or three months that followed the events of 9/11. First, it was as if there was a great greasy pall of grief lying heavily over the world. You didn’t have to be a New Yorker to feel the pain. You didn’t have to be a United States citizen or resident to feel the pain. To feel the pain you simply had to be a human being with the barest modicum of empathy for others. It was one of the few times in my life where almost everyone truly seemed to be citizens of the planet, undivided by artificial political boundaries or other distinguishing factors. The horror of a deliberate, senseless act of intentional evil caught live as it happened, and the endless broadcast replays that followed, had the positive result of making most rational people believe in the essential kinship of all humanity.
The second thing that strikes me about the aftermath is how united Americans were during those months. For a brief time, we had common cause and shared goals. For a brief time, we could talk to one another as if we truly were long standing neighbors speaking casually over a backyard fence about things of mutual interest or need. For a brief time, we worried together, prayed together, hoped together, began to plan together, began to take heart together and worked with common cause. Even our politicians sang together on the Capitol steps in a sort of Orwellian opera.
It took tragedy to make it happen. It took only moments to rip it apart.
Instead of building on the gift of togetherness that the 9/11 tragedy gave to us and creating something culturally unique within humanity’s chronicles, we proceeded, as rapidly as we could, to toss the gift away as if it were a hot potato or some form of worthless trash. We have placed ourselves so distantly from the gift that we turned planning about the means of reparations for the families of the 9/11 victims into venues of dispute and ill will. Despite the long history of religious tolerance upon which this country was founded, we took it upon ourselves to castigate entire belief systems for the actions of a few. We turned discussions about the establishment of memorials to the 9/11 fallen into occasions of mistrust, vile thoughts, and nasty hostility.
Ten years on, we are as segregated a people as I have known at any time in my life. I am not speaking about race when I use the word “segregation”, and I have chosen the word carefully. In 2011, we are a people segregated by political affiliation, by wealth, by religion, by heritage, by the possession of a job or the lack thereof, by having or not having things, and, yes, by the very color of our skins. Ours is not a separation born of bigotry (although the bigots and zealots are in full cry, for these are the sorts of times when they thrive); ours is a separation born, instead, of our respective world views, our respective Weltanschauung.
Never have I lived in a time of such palpable division, when each “adherent” to a cause, purpose or simple condition of nature distrusts, dislikes and, yes, even hates his or her antithesis – or, for that matter, anyone who simply looks somewhat askance in his or her general direction. Never have I lived in a time so lacking in the virtues of mutual understanding and tolerance.
There is nothing new to the idea that people belong in various groupings defined by interest, achievement level, physical attributes, beliefs or any other form of demarcation one can contemplate. In ordinary times, any single individual can live a patchwork life as a member of varying groups of one kind or another. In ordinary times, each of us does our “thing”, and moves within a diverse society sampling of the variety of its offerings and feeling enriched by doing so.
What is new in 2011 is the open animosity that exists between political groupings and the virulence and zealotry of their respective membership. It is as if many of these groupings are tribal units defined by blood rather than by belief. Red states hate blue states and vice versa, with neither color’s membership giving any significant thought to why they bear their appointed label, choosing only to wear it with pride.
The damage done by 9/11 was not limited to the loss of the Twin Towers or the 3,000 lives taken that day. The fear inspired by the 9/11 attacks created a climate in which animosity, hatred, bigotry, and thuggery could flourish, and, consequently, the victims of 9/11 include civility, tolerance, and the ability to listen introspectively and learn from others of differing persuasion. While our ability to self-govern had been coming into question prior to 9/11, it clearly took a major hit during post-9/11 times to the point now when our elected leaders are not only unable to govern, they take pride in their very inability by claiming partisanship as a virtue.
Our behavior since 9/11 has been such that it is almost as if we wanted al Qaeda to triumph.
It is not a time to assign blame for our post 9/11 failures, as there is more than enough to go around and that game leads only to further division. It is, however, a time for us to be collectively ashamed and to consider the value of what we have lost as a result of our societal failure to continue the knitting together that characterized those short few months following 9/11. We should have gotten our revenge on the 9/11 attackers by strengthening the American melting pot, rather than bowing to their will by falling into a morass of disunion.
We used to be strong and our strength came from our diversity. We are now significantly weaker and that weakness comes from our segregation. Segregation is the antithesis of diversity: at the heart of diversity is a collective joy in the creativity of all humanity as a species as shown by the varied ways in which people navigate the time between birth and death; at the heart of segregation lies the basic fear of the unknown and the different with which each human is hardwired.
We have confused selfishness for individualism in that we speak and act as if the collective put down of others is an expression of individualism. To me, the concept of “rugged individualism” means that you must not only have the courage to be the self you wish to become, you must also have the courage to honor others seeking to do the same. To me, ”rugged individualism” cannot include the collective cowardice inherent in groups attempting to blame others for their own failings – the same kind of cowardice that, taken to an extreme, allowed the ideological masterminds of the 9/11 attack to sit safely within their remote caves of cultural supremacy, while allowing their minions to take the lives of so many innocents along with their own.
In short, we have reverted to a form of tribalism born of suspicion and fear and have forgotten how to best consider the collective good.
There are quiet voices urging that we find the courage to return to a society based upon broad-based civility and mutual respect, and it is time for those voices to sing out as loudly as they can. In doing so, they could do no better than to sing the words of Eric Bibb:
“I got my own list of questions, got my own truth to live,
Got my own hand-made gifts, that I’m longin’ to give
Got my own star to follow, my own rivers to cross
In my own time
Got my own way of talkin’, got my own way to smile,
Got my own way of walkin’, my own look and style.
Got my own way of prayin’, my very own way to sing
Still, I’m connected, to you, and every one and every thing”*
Imagine what might happen if all those politicians returned to the Capitol steps and sang that in unison!
* Connected, music and lyrics by Eric Bibb
