I was going to write on what I was working on September 11, 2001, but that seems somewhat trivial compared to the events of that day. However, like many folks, I was confused and my initial thought was that I must have done something wrong. When I dialed the number of a software manufacturer in Islandia, New York I received a busy signal before I got past the area code. After a few more tries my next thought was that my long distance privileges had been disallowed, though I had nothing to base that on and it would have been extremely unreasonable of my client. Still, to confirm, I called home, which was long distance at the time.
Ann answered, so that wasn’t it. “I can’t get through to New York,” I told her. “The whole area code is busy.”
A few minutes later she phoned me back and said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, probably a Cessna or other small privately-owned plane. At about the same time people on my floor starting muttering about New York, the Trade Center, and a plane. Many of us headed to the operations room where there was a small TV set for use on the midnight shift. We watched in stunned silence as the events unfolded.
What can I say? I am sure many people felt the way I did: slightly nauseous and disorientated, as though coming down with the flu. My brain could hardly take it all in. I left early that day, wanting to be home with my family. The images of people falling from 90 floors or more, the roiling cloud of white dust boiling down streets, an airliner disappearing into a building are all still clear in my mind.
Being in the high tech industry, that’s where my thoughts turned over the next few days. With distributed computing, clustering, hot backup sites, the requirement to house hundreds or thousands of employees in one place was disappearing. Companies would realize this and wake up to the new reality that insanity makes everyone a target; the bigger the target the more likely it will be attacked. I envisioned large companies spread out into small computer-connected offices located far apart in small towns and rural areas. That hasn’t happened as far as I know, but it is entirely feasible. It no longer makes sense to me to herd people into congested inner-cities where they become, not only targets, but contributors to the stresses on our selves and on our planet.
But, I also considered other things. Few realize what the name “Al-Queda” means and where it comes from. It is an Arabic translation of the name of the science fiction seven-volume series of novels called The Foundation by Isaac Asimov. The books encompass the story, covering several thousand years, of the predictions and timely interventions in history by Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian. This one person triggers the collapse of the current corrupt empire and then guides humanity’s creation of a new galactic empire built upon the ruins of the old. The series was published between 1951 and 1986, with the original trilogy produced between 1951 and 1953. There have been several articles published that claim a link between Asimov’s books and the basic premises and modus operandi of the terrorist group. If you Google “al-queda Asimov” a number of the articles and speculative pieces are listed. But, whether you buy the premise that bin Laden read the series and that some of the ideas presented shaped his thinking or not, there are striking similarities. Bin Laden and Hari Seldon had a lot in common. Without a doubt, bin Laden was the hero of his own story.
The idea that society, or the world as a whole, is corrupt and beyond redemption is not new. The idea that a single individual, or a small group of individuals, can bring down the corrupt and build a new utopia based upon whatever bias they have, is not new. We have seen this played out repeatedly in movies like the James Bond series, the classic western, or any of the fantasy-driven franchises that dominate. None of this is new. The Crusades, for example, were based upon the premise that an evil empire had control of the Holy Land which had to be liberated by Christian heroes. Beowulf fought and killed the monstrous Grendel. Moses confronted the Pharaoh and led his people out of slavery. This idea is in Gilgamesh’s battles with the monsters Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven. The story of the hero standing up to evil, destroying it, thus making possible the new utopia goes back into prehistory. In that regard there was nothing original about bin Laden.
…and everyone is the hero of his own story. It’s the others who are the bad guys. Some have difficulty imagining that they are the bad guys in someone else’s story. The certainty that we are right and they are wrong never really leaves us. We simply cannot be the bad guys in someone else’s view because we know, beyond a doubt, that it is they who are the bad guys, so whatever they believe must be wrong. We can write up lists as long as required about their shortcomings and failures, about how they betrayed us and let us down. We can write even longer lists about all the wonderful things we offered and gave them, that they ungraciously threw back at us.
I was sixteen in the fall of 1962 when the world stood on the brink of disaster. For several hours we did not know if this was the end of humans and most of all life on this planet. I recall the distain I felt when the Toronto Board of Education ordered all of its students to assemble in school basements to crouch and cover their heads. How on earth was that going to protect us from an atomic blast? The math and the reality didn’t add up. There really are powers bigger than we are; bigger even than our heroes. Nuclear explosions are one of them.
And it occurred to me as I walked back to the boarding house that day that there was probably someone in Russia, my age, who realized the same thing as I did, and was wondering what do they get out of killing me and everyone else? What’s in it for the Russians? And he was wondering what was in it for the Americans. The image of the average Russian, a farmer or factory worker with no greater aim than to nurture and protect his family, flashed into my mind. What do we have against him? And I have asked myself that question during every conflict since. What did we gain by destroying villages in Vietnam and killing the rice farmers and tradesmen? What good does it do any of us to fire missiles at the homes of accountants and teachers and day laborers? What does it benefit anyone to hijack an airliner and fly it into an office building?
The power of myth is a force difficult to see past. Not only does it blind us, but it directs our actions along paths we would never otherwise consider taking. Nietzsche’s “superman” was not amoral as some believe, but he simply has risen above the divisive power of the myth of good and evil, of us versus them. And that is a genuinely noble pursuit.
But as long as we don’t know the answers and are locked into this mythic struggle, we are in a state of high anxiety. Watch a zoo animal in a cage: it paces back and forth, back and forth because it doesn’t know the answers about where it is; something is wrong but the animal doesn’t know what. I’ve seen confused and frightened people do the same thing. The same movements. The same expressions. Which are you? Which are all of us? Do we control our visions or do they control us?
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