LOVE

There is only one thing truly worth remembering about the attack on the WTC, because that one thing uncovers the true hidden nature of humanity. Before the Twin Towers crumbled, those buildings let out one great sigh, one great "I love you", then the lives that spoke it were crushed beneath burning rubble. Perhaps for the first time in human history we have direct evidence of the last thoughts to occupy a human mind before the solitary experience of individual death. The ultimate act of thousands of humans who knew they were about to die was to call wives, husbands, lovers, mothers, fathers, and friends to tell them "I love you". No different were the people who jumped from the towers holding hands. Not blame, not revenge, love. This is the only real event to have occurred on September 11th. Meditate on this and much of the truth of who we are is immediately apparent. Meditate on the catalogue of abuses which caused this event, and the astonishing speed with which the meaning of these tragic deaths was appropriated, was used to shore up the power and wealth of the regimes that had caused it, to undermine civil liberties, and to push a foreign policy and economic agenda some call the New World Order and others McWorld, and the immense sorrow of how deeply we are capable of losing our way as a species is presented with astonishing and horrifying clarity. Crying was the only sane reaction the author of these lines could come up with at the time.

BLAME, RESPONSIBILITY AND SOME FORBIDDEN WORDS

Humans are incredibly good, when faced with things going wrong, and rather than get together, sit down, and try and sort it out, at running around shouting and pointing and looking for someone to blame, and once a suitable or convenient victim is available, make its' life a misery, or generally kill it. The wise know that this is usually a sign of self-blame denial, blame transference, and other forms of responsibility avoidance. Of course, the wise rarely mention this to anyone else, since they have no interest in being beaten to death in pubs, or lynched on the street.

Responsibility is one of the forbidden words. Everywhere humans blame each other for what are essentially the symptoms of an unnatural separation in their own minds. This is all part of the same concealment process. We mistake historical events, like September 11th, for causes. There are many other forbidden words. One easy one is "Why?" No intelligent person will have failed to notice this question was never properly asked, never mind answered, in the media and political flurry after September the 11th. No one has really pursued to its ultimate conclusions the question of why this event happened, of what could possibly have caused the enormous hatred of the Western world that itself caused the cold and deliberate horror of that terrorist attack.

Many other words have been shamelessly abused. America was attacked because its' Freedom was hated by Evil people. The utter hypocrisy with which the simplistic task of assigning blame has been conducted should be painfully obvious.

Let us examine three propositions, the first of which is no one was responsible. This seems obviously nonsensical, we in the West believe in Freedom of the individual, and for there to be no one responsible then people's actions would have to be totally outside their personal control. However when we consider the proposition "someone was responsible" we also run into many absurdities. We seem to have a group of terrorists who have blown themselves up with the WTC. Obvious choice, but of no use in the blame process since already dead. Luckily we have a terrorist organisation, and amazingly this organisation has a charismatic leader, who fits perfectly into the role of "The Evil One".

So we have our culprits. In fact at the time of writing Kabul has fallen and the noose tightens around Bin Laden. More amusingly, the Afghans are turning to the Western powers and, with a grin, politely saying, "Well, thanks very much for that bombing, but would you mind awfully getting the fuck out of our country?"

To most sane people, a small nagging doubt may remain: surely, none of this answers the question "Why?" Which most people can be excused for thinking is quite important really, I mean, if it's likely that some people out there are going to be trying to blow up, us in general, or possibly by accident me in particular, I want to know why, don't you? Maybe that would help us work out how we could make them stop.

We have our culprits, and yet even if we track down and crush the entire network, we will have done to prevent any of it happening again. We will have once again attacked the symptoms, leaving the causes to fester.

If you have been nodding and agreeing with this you are very wrong. That's official. Our glorious leaders have suggested in the media, that to seek causes is to seek to excuse the terrorists. Don't worry, you are not a very bad person, just mistaken. What happened was, these people hated our Western Freedom, so they attacked us, because, wait, this the clincher, you see, they are Evil, oh, and they don't like girls either. Some of them eat babies, we have proof we can't show you. Is that enough demonisation for you? There you go, "Who wants to be a Millionaire" is on now, so? Do you feel better now?

As the comedian Mark Thomas pointed out, to tell us not to think about why the terrorists chose to blow up the WTC, and to just be content with the explanation "They did it because they are Evil" is like telling a doctor not to worry about the causes of his patient's symptoms, because the cause is obviously evil demons. Then again it is so easy to forget war is a matter of government policy, not conscience. Indeed, the word Evil is much abused.

We blame to avoid responsibility. Our governments blame to avoid responsibility for their actions. We blame, so as to avoid feeling responsible for our governments' actions. There can be no notion of democracy without the people being responsible for the actions of their government. Otherwise democracy has no foundation. We did or did not elect them. In recent cases mainly didn't. Yet all of us who did not vote, or do not participate in politics, are accomplices by omission in the crimes of our leaders (except me, I was out shopping). By that argument, everyone, including the victims of the WTC attacks, was responsible. That does not mean that anyone was to blame.

We are all caught in an illusion about the world, an illusion that creates a false separation within our minds between "us" and "them". Which leads us to ignore our common humanity and reduce each other to labels. Blame is all part of this false understanding.

The problem perhaps centres on the false idea the populations of the West have been sold as Freedom. This other abused word, Freedom, which the terrorists so envy and hate, which they seek to destroy bloodily. Yet it is a false freedom we are given. It is simply the freedom to be irresponsible. This deified individualism, revolves around the endless selfish dance of self-gratification. This consumer society keeps us as children, spoilt teenagers, for whom freedom is to have all the toys they want, no matter what the cost to others, and no matter what it does to our now visibly suffering planet. Is this not a negation of life, the universe, and human potential? Is this not simply a selfish escape from responsibility to doing the Good? Where does this leave everyone else, freeman? Is this freedom?

Is not freedom total autonomy, to be able to stand fully on one's feet, alone if necessary, and never to bend at the knees (except maybe when proposing marriage)? How can this be possible without simultaneously caring for everything? We are not isolated individuals, impregnable island, or every action affects the entirety of the universe and its future. How can Freedom truly exist without absolute responsibility, the feeling of responsibility towards everything? How different this is from the childish freedom of the Western individual. Is not the ultimately responsible human, the one who sacrifices his life, not just for a friend, but for a total stranger? In the whole of the events around the collapse of the Twin Towers, were not the people we all truly admired the firemen and police officers who rushed to their deaths in their attempts to save lives? Where did such bravery stem, if not also from love?

It is incredible to think that going to work at a shit job every day, to feed your children, is not celebrated and rewarded, when it is one of the greatest acts of sanity, responsibility (not to mention love) most people on this planet manage to display. It sometimes seems like the medals and pay-bonuses are very badly distributed.

How far these notions of Freedom and Responsibility are from the blame, hatred and war, which have unfolded since September 11th.

There is one final really, really, very forbidden word, and that is forgiveness.

What we have, however, is plenty of hate.


UNITY IS THE CELEBRATION OF DIVERSITY

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Interlude

The Frenchman, was meditating on the total intelligence failure, which had preceded and greatly facilitated the attacks. It seemed quite obvious to him that these attacks were simply the reaping of a harvest sown by an extremely greedy, cold-hearted and most of all short sighted Western foreign policy. Assuming, of course, that is was not part of a plot by a global conspiracy of the powerful to bring to finally and permanently reduce the population to herd status. Maybe they were blood-drinking giant lizards. Maybe the attack was a form of occult blood sacrifice. Maybe there was a reason why planes did not scramble over New York till after the attacks. Maybe there was a reason why no passengers described the terrorists as Arabs. Maybe passports can survive plane crashes even when Black Boxes do not. Perhaps there was a reason why Bush Junior was so adamant people should not listen to conspiracy theories. None of this The Frenchman found very useful, preferring at the time to comment on the official fiction rather than the unofficial one.

Quite patently, when people decide to use other people's countries as a playground for their power and economic games, they should expect that the oppressed, brutalised, exploited, surviving relatives of the collateral damage would find some way of kicking them in the teeth eventually.

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