:: Friday 14 September 01

I keep typing and deleting, typing and deleting. What I want to say was probably said better by Shashta/majorweather in her LiveJournal entry of 9/12, 5:26 a.m. My little add-on to that:

I think one thing that's been hard for a lot of us is the feeling of helplessness. We can give blood, we can send money, we can offer thoughts and prayers, we can speak out against xenophobic and racist actions in our own communities. But there's so little we feel we can actually do.

One thing we all can do, though--we can inform ourselves about the context and history underlying Tuesday's seemingly senseless acts. I'm a little tired of people who leap to the assumption that any critical examination of America's role in international affairs, and the moral ambiguities thereof, implies lack of patriotism. A little tired of efforts to understand other peoples' anger or hostility toward our government's past actions being met with "You're saying we deserved this? You asshole!"

No. It's not that simple; things so seldom are. What some of us are trying to say is that actions don't occur in a vacuum; that there's a long, complicated, painful history and context for what went on this week; that a lot of us don't know much about that history and context; that it behooves us to make some effort to understand those things before we take drastic action; and that understanding does not equal agreement or approval.

There's a lot that we can't do, those of us sitting at home helplessly watching TV--we can't dig through the rubble with our own hands, or hold the bereaved and comfort them, or turn the clock backwards to Monday and make things happen differently.

But one thing we can always do, in even the most extreme circumstances--we can learn, and we can think. We can expand our understanding of any situation, try to take in all the painful ambiguities and complications. Reactive rage, self-defensiveness, black-and-white thinking are natural in crisis, but we have to get past that, if we're not going to simply let the terrorists set the terms for what happens from here.

Some articles I found thought-provoking are here, here, and here (note this latter link is from 1996). An equally provocative discussion has been going on on metafilter. Starting points.

previous | next

fandom journals

Anna | Aral | Athena4 | AuKestrel | beth666ann | Brighid | CLFinn | Colleen | Debchan | denise | Destina | Dine | Erica | Fluff on Top | Gemma | grit kitty | Helen | Ins | Ins2 | Jane St. Clair | Kate | LaT | Livia | Maygra | melymbrosia | Mia | Miriam | Mona | nancy | Nestra | Olwen | Olwen2 | Pam | Rowan | sabine | Sara | Sarah T.| Sheila | Shrift | Simplelyric | Soo | Te | Valeria | Viedma | Viridian | WitchQueen | xen | ZorroRojo

other sites I visit

Bad Hair Days | Barbelith| Hissyfit | Iain | kottke.org | lileks | memepool | Mighty Big TV | Pop Culture Junk Mail | plaintive wail | Tomato Nation

 

"Our vocation is not a sphinx's riddle, which we must solve in one guess or else perish. Some people find, in the end, that their paradoxical vocation is to go through life guessing wrong. It takes them a long time to find out that they are happier that way."

--Thomas Merton