[op-ed] 9/11: the view from a safe distance

Once again on this 10th anniversary of 9/11 to be subjected to the TV footage of that day. Those planes flying with such sickening purpose into those buildings. That interval, now rich with irony. Then all that immense architecture tumbling irresistibly down. Over and over.

What is it about that footage? Yes, the sudden thought of “my god, all the people in those buildings…” But more: the sheer fact of all that architecture itself, that massive human assertion in cement and steel and glass, raised up so high and brought so low, in seconds, to rubble and dust. No question, it continues to fascinate, nauseate, mesmerize, horrify, in no particular order.

There’s a bit of a universal of early childhood scenario in it: with mama’s help baby stacks blocks. Two, three…carefully now…four, five, six…careful…. and then baby gleefully smashes them down. Mama concerned to impart to baby respect for the labor and care and creativity invested in a small construction. Baby at this point with divided loyalties.

One reaction to 9/11 might have been simply architectural: just don’t build it that high. Sure, there’s something human in stacking up blocks, but perhaps we need to rethink the impulse to pile it so high because we can. /rethink the architecture of hubris, skyscraping trophy buildings.

Some argued a replacement architecture of a different, more humble spirit. Roger Ebert argued that we should bless the site by allowing it to go back to the fallow earth it once was. But despite the widespread contempt for trophy houses, when it comes to p ublic buildings we don’t do humble. Got to show those terrorists we’re not afraid of them.

The 10th anniversary has been the occasion of a lot of conjecture about the meaning of that fateful day. The meaning in terms of our response: Two d ebilitating wars. The effect of those wars on the economy. The incalculable moral cost in the reconstruing of torture. And has anyone calculated the cost in hours spent by all travelers everywhere in security lines? Let alone the vaguely humiliating comedy of partial disrobing in public, the patdowns or undressing by video.

You’d have to say those terrorists got us good, in ways they could never have imagined in their happiest dream. Of course it would be a mistake to say that the terrorists caused all this. Much of this misery is not what they did but how we reacted. Architecturally and otherwise, our reaction could have been quite different.

One large perspective seems undeniable: this will continue to be a dangerous world, increasingly so with high tech terrorism, as long as it is run by systems social and economic which systematically create billions of (here, everywhere) miserably poor.

That seems an obvious lesson, but not one that those in power (or the rest of us who passively or actively empower them) have learned or even for a moment considered.

Following 9/11 I wrote here of wrenching myself free of the TV that beautiful late summer morning to swim in my local pond, “quiet, self absorbed, a little world unto itself, innocent of the events of the day. “ “The Outer Cape has always been about disconnection,” I wrote. “A move here, a geographical removal, is also an emotional withdrawal, in part from those crowded centers of population, those very symbols of affluence under attack. But I couldn’t help obsessing, even while bathing in the pond’s innocence, about what it would have been like being on those planes, heading for those buildings…”

We are all New Yorkers” we said on that day. But the fact is I was tremendously grateful and remain grateful to be at this much remove. It amazes me that millions, including numerous friends, continue to live there in that target city, many going to work in tall buildings. It’s an ever smaller world, I know, but I count o n the likelihood that a hijacked jet (or the suitcase nuclear bomb that we now have reason to believe could fairly easily be built and delivered ) will not be wasted on Wellfleet’s town hall.

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