Pop Culture

I’m sitting in San Francisco International Airport waiting for my flight. It’s 9/11/08. Seven years ago today the world was going mad. Today the air is thick with 9/11 tributes, which I find completely fitting and proper. Those touched personally of course have a special kinship with the event that the rest of us have been spared. I was home in San Diego when it happened. I was up early and saw plane number two hit in real time. It was like a surreal nightmare which one could not fully comprehend – or awaken from. No one I knew personally was touched, but like all Americans, I was forever changed.

When I was two years old JFK was assassinated. I grew up in a world of adults frequently asking one another ”where were you when…?”  Because I was a baby, I never experienced the horror of that event. The closest I ever came to understanding it was in 1985 when the Challenger exploded, killing all aboard, including the first teacher in space. Nothing of course could prepare any of us for the atrocities of seven years ago today. Now I too ask, “Where were you…?”, as do so many others.

There was also a frequent refrain about how much the world had changed since that day in Dallas. Phrases like ‘the end of innocence’ and ‘the end of Camelot’ were frequently used. Since I did not know a world before that date, I could not relate to any change at all. Was the world better?  Was the world worse? We tend to idealize the past. It’s a universal human tendency – and it’s usually incorrect. The world is a much better place today than it was 40-odd years ago, but it certainly is different as well. 

How about the the youngest among us today?  They are born into a world of color coded threats, encroachments on civil liberties, US troops fighting in far off lands, stringent security and global terrorism (and global warming). They do not know life before this…then again, they will not know of ‘duck and cover’, ‘cold war’, ‘mutually assured destruction’ or other relics from a nightmare era I hope we have left in the dust bin of history. Their world, on balance, is a better one from many perspectives.

Is the world better overall? Is the world worse on balance? People tend to find what they are looking for, so the answer to both could be yes. If you want to believe the world is worse since 9/11, you can find ample evidence. If you want to believe the world is better in spite of 9/11, and that humanity, for all the warts and indiscretions, continues an upward spiral of accomplishment, then there is plenty of evidence for that as well. As an optimistic realist, I strongly hold the latter view.

However, and regardless of your world view, today is a day for all Americans to reflect on what has happened, what changed, and what we learned. To remember that the world can be a dangerous place, and that ideas do matter. Some of those ideas are worth defending at any cost. I’m not wrapping myself in the flag here. Our nation was based on dissension and revolution. We need many voices in the public square. Today however is a day to quiet those voices and reflect.

The sun will come up again tomorrow, and we can again begin our quarrelsome discussions. It’s also a good time to ask someone “where were you when…?”

– Carl Melville / Blogvious

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