It is tempting to believe that Americans were truly changed after the horror of Sept.
11, that we are now less likely to lose ourselves in the contemplation of either Jennifer
Lopez's navel or our own. It is tempting to believe that the deaths of so many
ordinary people—workers, parents, business travelers, couples returning from family
reunions and weddings—has led us to take the words of Psalm 90 to heart: "Lord,
make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart." But only
time will tell.
For a few days, shock and grief made us people under a spell. The
relentless noise and clutter of advertising was silenced, and when we turned on our
televisions we saw unaccustomed images of people at prayer. Amazingly, we were more likely
to hear the words of the prophet Jeremiah than those of the latest teen idol. Our
celebrity culture all but vanished in the light of apocalypse, a word that comes from the
Greek for "uncovering" or "revealing." In my book Amazing Grace: A
Vocabulary of Faith, I said of apocalypse, "we human beings learn best how to love
when we're a bit broken, when our plans fall apart, when our myths of
self-sufficiency and safety are shattered. Apocalypse is meant to bring us to our senses,
allowing us a sober if painful glimpse of what is possible in the new life we build from
the ashes of the old."
Apocalypse grabs us by the shoulders and says, "Look at what
matters in life." And suddenly, we see. But both common sense and the biblical
narrative remind us that it is difficult to hold on to our new, unencumbered vision. On
Sept. 12, it seemed imperative to sit in the silence of a church, or to seek the company
of others to light candles and offer prayers. But as we returned to our normal routines,
the imperative faded. Road rage has re-emerged, and incidents of domestic violence are
said to be increasing in the face of new economic uncertainties. I suspect that we will
prove ourselves to be, in the ancient biblical phrase, a "stiff-necked people," remarkably good at forgetting both our own mortality and God's eternity.
And what of change? Advertising is back, in full force, along with the
vapid celebrity interviews that constitute modern offerings of bread-and-circuses.
Americans are being avidly encouraged not to change their ways, but to fight
terrorism by buying more stuff. If our spendthrift way of life comes at the expense of
others in the world, we don't want to hear about it. And we won't hear about it,
not from the media.
IN THESE FRIGHTENING times, I am especially discouraged that what has
not changed since Sept. 11 is our resistance to information that threatens our ideological
stance, be it "America can do no right" or "America can do no wrong."
These positions may make people feel good about themselves, but they don't do much
for the common good. Judging from the news, the mean and divisive spirit of the Vietnam
era is alive and well, asking "Whose side are you on?" Is it the professor who
told his students, on Sept. 11, that he would support anyone who blew up the Pentagon, or
the college secretary who was ordered to remove an American flag she had placed on her
desk in memory of a friend who died at the Trade Center? The professor received death
threats; after a public outcry, the secretary was allowed to reinstate the flag. Is this a
liberal-conservative issue? A middle class-working class divide? Is there a
"side" to take?
I was in high school and college during the Vietnam war, just naive
enough to be surprised when people assumed that my interest in the history of the
region—my reading of Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake, Bernard
Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu, or Graham
Greene's The Quiet American, for example—meant that I was a commie
sympathizer. Like most Americans of my generation, I had very little exposure to Asian
history in school. It had been treated as a part of the world we could ignore with
impunity. Willful ignorance was a safer path, but was it truly patriotic not to want to
know any more than our leaders or Time magazine were telling us?
It saddens me now that so little has changed. Now it is Afghanistan and
the countries of the Middle East that are terra incognito, and Americans
again are proud of their ignorance. By that I mean that we are still self-righteously
resisting those who would give us information we need in order to understand the world
around us. The Oct. 7, 2001, issue of The New York Times Magazine contained what I found to be a straightforward and useful article by a professor of Middle
Eastern studies, Fouad Ajami, titled "Nowhere Man." I had been wondering how an
educated young man, Mohamed Atta, could have turned from the pursuit of urban studies and
become a terrorist willing to destroy a vibrant urban neighborhood. Ajami's article
provided some answers, offering a view of the Egyptian society in which Atta was raised,
in which tensions between traditional culture and modernity had led many young people to
embrace what Ajami terms an "an anxious, belligerent piety."
A few weeks after the article appeared, The Times published two letters that were extremely critical, one complaining of "sentimental
explanations for [Atta's] actions." There have been other incidents in which people providing background information on the Arab world have been
attacked as unpatriotic, or worse. Is it really true that we don't need a better
understanding of the conditions that have allowed criminals such as Osama bin Laden to
flourish—the aftermath of European colonialism in the Middle East and the arrogant
and often self-defeating foreign policy that the United States has pursued in the region
for the past 50 years? Does seeking to understand how the terrorists came to be really
mean that we are excusing their actions or suggesting that America somehow deserved the
horrific attacks of Sept. 11? How we cope with these questions will, I believe, tell us whether or not we have been changed.
Kathleen Norris was an essayist and poet whose works include Dakota,
The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace, and The Virgin of Bennington when this article appeared.
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