As the ten-year commemoration of 09/11 begins to fade away,
I would like to share something that I wrote a couple of months after that
event that still rings true to me today, ten years later:
Concerning
September 11, there certainly is a lot to sort through. It was so shocking,
amazing, and surreal. After that first wave was over, my reaction was just to
“carry on”. I just have a few basic thoughts and observations. One theme that
has kept with me is that our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness:
freedom. It is what we cherish most, and what we flaunt most. I know that this
“enemy” we are dealing with is founded in religious fascism with which there
seems to be no room for compromise or negotiation. But this fascism has gained
momentum not through promoting its message of what it stands for, which is
ludicrous on its face, but what it stands against, which is the unfettered
consumerism, materialism, and amorality which has come to epitomize the
American way of life.
What
was quite striking to me after September 11, was that for a whole week, all of
the crass commercialism that has crept into every corner of our lives came to a
screeching halt, and yet life went on. All of the commercials in all of the
media were muted. It was eerie but actually quite pleasant. And then in the
weeks that followed, as we returned more to “normal”, the commercialism started
creeping back, with a new and bizarre message. Consumerism is now being equated
with patriotism and freedom. It has become so evident that the economic
well-being of our country is tied to extravagant consumption. Which leads to my
next theme.
America
is loved and hated throughout the world because of our strengths and
weaknesses. Democracy and freedom are ideals that most of the world at least
aspires to. Why they need to be so closely wedded to numbing commercialism and
excessive consumption is another question. America is resented throughout the
world because of our relentless materialistic imperialism that seeks to implant
itself and its mindset into every corner of the world, and hardly to its
betterment. The triumph of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola does not equate to a
heightened civilization and is not to the betterment of the quality of life in
the world. Resentment is a
powerful emotion, and our fascist enemies can use it to garner support in their
crusade against the Western “infidels”.
Before
September 11, we were wobbling because we were so out of balance. Weaknesses were showing up in the
functioning of the FBI, our premier law enforcement agency, the issues
concerning our last election exposed embarrassing weaknesses to our very ideals
and system of democracy, Columbine, parents murdering their children, a
political system with partisanship paramount. One positive outcome of September
11 is that it will take a while for the partisan bickering to rear its ugly
head. But in the unification that has emerged, these other serious questions
have been deflected. Nobody is considering that maybe we shouldn’t be going
back to “business as usual” because “business as usual” wasn’t so great. We’re
all trying to go back to how it was, with just a new layer of heightened
vigilance and security underlying a new sense of insecurity and vulnerability. September
11 shook our national psyche because we were so complacent in our sense of
security and material well-being. That was a sense of security that many in the
rest of the world never had to begin with, but we could never appreciate
that.
A
client of mine from Bangladesh pointed this out to me. He said in Bangladesh,
abject poverty, insecurity, and death are everywhere all of the time, but
Americans aren’t used to these conditions so close to home, while a good deal
of the rest of the world deals with it on a daily basis. Foreigners like him
come to America for the promise of material well-being we present, but at the
same time, they resent us because of our material shallowness.
We
must resist fascism of any sort, but that does not mean that we must promote
excessive consumerism as the favored ends to democracy and freedom. Self-interest
must be tempered with selflessness. Maybe it was too cynical and too anemic in
its approach, but perhaps George Bush, Sr. was hitting upon something when he
promoted “A Thousand Points of Light” and George Bush, Jr. with his
“compassionate conservatism”. There is no doubt to me that we need further
illumination and compassion, not through hollow demagoguery, but through an
awakening and deepening of genuine spirituality.
May
we all find the proper balance and inner strength to get through these
difficult and challenging times.
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