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Reflections on the Catastrophe: September 11

by Joseph Chuman - Leader of the Bergen Ethical Society.


Our lives will never be quite the same. We have experienced a national trauma which has transformed the lives of all of us.

The vicious and violent catastrophe of September 11th killed thousands of innocent people, and it has caused irreparable pain to tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of good people who lost loved ones, family and friends.

Individuals have been scarred for life, but so has our collective national psyche. The threshold of our vulnerability has been raised forever. Entering a museum, crossing a bridge, or flying in the airplane will not be quite the same experience after September 11th as it was before.

It is a cliché, but it is nevertheless true, that we Americans have lost a certain innocence. When I travel to Europe, I am still quite surprised at how the legacy of war infuses the sensibilities of Europeans, though the last Great War took place decades before the majority of Europeans was even born.

What looms before us is an unknown future, and perhaps that is the most unsettling thing of all. This assault on America is a world historical and transformative event. We cannot predict how it will subtly transform the texture and self-understanding of Americans and American political life 10, 20 or 50 years from now. I am concerned for my children and grandchildren. Perhaps how we respond now will make some difference. The enormity of the event is simply too hard to emotionally embrace. To gaze now at lower Manhattan, the City of my birth, and a place which you and I love, and to see a transformed skyline, a gaping hole where two massive buildings once stood, is to see a City wounded which reflects the wounds which all of us, I am sure, carry.

If you are like me, you have been walking around slightly dazed and slightly sick. Perhaps you have had and are experiencing feelings of shock, grief, fear, anger, rage and a vague sense of unreality, at various times and in no particular order.

I sometimes try to return to normalcy, but I can't for long. I am still resonating with the horror. It seems that all the daily concerns which before Tuesday where so consuming, now feel petty and picayune. It feels a bit unseemly to concern myself with day to day preoccupations, when more than 5,000 of my fellow human beings have died so near and so recently -- when the agony is so raw and so overwhelming, and commands my attention so powerfully.

Though this horrific event is not over, and will in ways intensify in the days and weeks to come - as the stories of personal grief and agony flood the airways, and this country engages in war - at some time, life must return to normal. We have no choice. Life is not lived in the big life and death issues. Rather the tapestry of life is stitched together in the small day to day thoughts, concerns, dreams and worries we confront in every minute - What shall I wear today? Shall I help my child with homework? What shall I prepare for dinner? Life is lived in the small things, and in time these will press upon us and overtake the feelings of horror, which will fade into the background, but not fade away. In the face of this catastrophe there are six thoughts I would like to leave you with. Six conceptual points which perhaps might help to organize our emotions in the service of reentering when we do, the normal condition of life. I am sure you can add to these with reflection of your own. Here they are:

1. The first relates to the human side of this horrific event. Our humanity rests in our ability to share in the emotions of our fellow human beings. The human dimension composed of the pain, loss and hurt of this horrific event is too large for us to fully absorb, but it is a brute fact, and we should not try to escape it either, even if we could. We need to stay close to our TV sets. For own sake we need to talk about it. And if we can, we should strive to came to the aid of these who have suffered most, through charitable acts, and if we personally know someone who has suffered a loss, try to come to their aid, and mitigate their suffering, even if only to let them know that we are present and we care. It will be good for them and good for us.
   
   
2. Second, -- and here I am may be at variance with some of my fellow humanists - I believe in justice, in the sense that those who have broken the rules of civility which we strive to keep need to pay us back. Whatever the perceived grievances, whatever the political motives, the wanton death of thousands of innocent lives is an evil act which cries our for justice. In some way the anger generated by this heinous criminal act needs to be assuaged. But the line between justice retribution and revenge is a thin one. Which side of the line we come out on defines us as either civilized or barbarous, and thereby closer to the motives of those we seek to condemn. Whatever response there is on a national level, and there no doubt will be one, needs to be a measured one, and needs to avoid the taking of innocent life. The wholesale bombing of an entire nation which is already half dead through starvation and the oppression of the fanatics that enslave them, is not worthy of us or of justice, and will no doubt spawn retaliatory violence which will make the situation as it pertains to violence and terror even worse. Unbridled violence which appeals to the worst in us may bring momentary relief to some. It certainly will not bring peace, nor justice.
   
   
3. We need to be cautious to prevent a violent backlash against in this country against imperiled minorities, and here I am thinking of the Muslim minority which is large, here in New Jersey, but very new and vulnerable. One of the ugliest dimensions of American history has been its legacy of stereotyping and bigotry foisted against immigrants, ironically in this land of immigrants. Nothing exacerbates this bigotry more than War. We have just gone through a period of national soul searching with regard to our conduct toward the Japanese-American minority during World War II, ending in an official apology for a mistake writ large We need to ensure that the lesson of history do not prove useless, that we can learn from our ugly past by not repeating it. We need to rise above bigotry, and this is the test which will prove whether we have.
   
   
4. For the wanton, criminal act we have witnessed there can be no excuse. But there seems to be a type of blindness that Americans have, both average Americans, and those who make our foreign policy, as to how American power and American arrogance is despised by millions of the dispossessed across the globe. Terrorism and fanaticism is the malignant expression of despair and resentment. We are creating a world viciously divided between the have and have nots. We remain dangerously ignorant of other cultures whose leadership abuses and manipulates religion by appealing to despair and hatred. In the Islamic world there are nascent democratic tendencies, which we tend to ignore, as we support dictators and tyrants in the service of our self-interest and at the expense of others. We think of Islamic societies in only stereotyped ways and as an ideology. We would do well on the national level and below to understand better the aspirations and real grievances of the world's dispossessed, with a view toward developing a more human foreign policy. Would such a shift ensure against terrorism? Not completely, because I believe, even if everyone owned his own pear tree that there will always be a few who want the pear that is going into your mouth simply because it is going into your mouth. But also believe that a foreign policy that entered into dialogue with foreign cultures and supported democratic participation in the developing world, and was fully committed to human rights. would create a more peaceful and safer world.
   
   
5. We need to be vigilant that in moments of fear that we not give up our freedom and our civil liberties. The greatness of America and the American character is vested in our being a free people. If we sacrifice that for the sake of security engined by our fears, we have given up everything that truly matters. The structures of American freedom are not a machine that runs of itself. In times of stress the temptation to yield it may be great. We must not let that happen. We must be among the guardians of our freedom. The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. We need now more than ever to be vigilant. Let us be resolute in the face of our fears.
   
   
6. I am not cynical in the least, in the popular recognition that this assault on America while displaying the worst in human behavior has also brought out the best. As humanists let us recognize and quietly celebrate the tremendous outpouring of goodness and solidarity, often heroic, but more often silent and unknown, that this tragedy has evoked.
   

For a short while we have been united and that unity has transcended whether we are democratic or republican, on the left or right, man or woman, white or black. Human goodness has happened, whether in those who helped others escape a doomed skyscraper, or gave their lives to rescue those covered by fallen steel and concrete, among those who volunteered to bring water and food, or helped in thousands of ways, unrecorded and unknown. It is a priceless testament to the human spirit and human goodness, and a true source of hope in a world that so often has become banal, trivial and self-interested. This, too, will leave its mark on the human future as it up-lifts our hearts at this moment.