9/11: a snapshot of the world

It’s not over, not by a long way. It will be a sub­ject that I won’t be able to ignore, that I will simply have to refer to many times as the situ­ation devel­ops. How­ever, in the extremely unim­port­ant and incon­sequen­tial corner of the inter­net that is Wherever You Are, I feel it’s time to try and move on a little, to return to a wider view.

Since Tues­day after­noon, there has been only one topic on this web­log. As someone who already has a tend­ency to pick on a theme and run with it until the soles are well and truly worn down, that’s a record even for me. But, in all hon­esty, everything else has paled into insignificance.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, I had a brief email con­ver­sa­tion with a friend who knows about this site, but (thank­fully?) never reads it. He asked whether I had writ­ten much about the events in Amer­ica this week — and I told him that, how­ever indir­ect or oblique some of the entries might have been, I’d writ­ten about noth­ing else. He was intrigued — he jumped to the con­clu­sion that I must have par­tic­u­lar emo­tional con­nec­tions with the tragedy. I told him that I didn’t. He couldn’t quite com­pre­hend that I just wanted — or even needed — to com­mu­nic­ate my thoughts about these acts of ter­ror­ism and their shock­ing after­math, if only in a vain attempt to get it straight in my own head.

Here are the facts. I have never vis­ited New York or the World Trade Cen­ter. I have never even been to the USA. I have a few friends (mostly acquaint­ances, a couple of close friends) liv­ing in other parts of the States, but all of them are a long way from either New York or Wash­ing­ton DC. I have a few Amer­ican friends in the UK — but, again, most are acquaint­ances rather than my closest con­fid­ants. Ulti­mately, I have no dir­ect or obvi­ous links with what’s been hap­pen­ing over the past few days. In the same tone that my friend implied in his email, then — why have I felt so emo­tion­ally involved?

Because the world is a small place.

Because pain­fully raw human emo­tions cross any num­ber of geo­graph­ical or cul­tural boundaries.

Because what happened last Tues­day will have far-reaching reper­cus­sions for every­one in the months ahead — and some of those pos­sible reper­cus­sions, as I’ve men­tioned before, truly scare me.

And because it’s impossible to remain cold and aloof when you watch trans­fixed as, in the space of approx­im­ately 92 minutes, one of the world’s tallest build­ings is brought crash­ing to the ground by an act of planned hatred, killing thou­sands of people (and we still don’t know how many). Do I need to have a dir­ect emo­tional involve­ment — to have known someone work­ing in the twin towers of the World Trade Cen­ter, for instance — to be affected by that?

Yes­ter­day even­ing, hav­ing con­sciously cut myself off from tele­vised news for a day and a half, I watched the BBC’s late news. While I could never ima­gine becom­ing jaded by the images of destruc­tion in New York, they were no longer as shock­ing as they had been. But I was still moved by the reports of people plas­ter­ing the streets with hastily-produced posters, dis­play­ing pho­tos and descrip­tions of miss­ing friends, fam­ily and loved ones — par­tic­u­larly as they have had to resort to such basic meth­ods in a thor­oughly mod­ern city. And I was moved by the tears of Amer­ic­ans try­ing to under­stand the viol­ence that had been unleashed across their country.

The news broad­cast closed with a look back over the events of the last three and a half days. Maybe it seems slightly crass to talk of how well the BBC put together their char­ac­ter­istic and mem­or­able mont­ages, but as the pro­gramme drew the week to a close with a sombre col­lec­tion of words and images, I could feel tears form­ing in my eyes.

There are lots of holes, and very few facts, in what I’m say­ing. I am pain­fully aware that I am very guilty, along with many in the rel­at­ively wealthy west, of hav­ing not been so pro­foundly affected by other national tra­gedies that have taken place else­where in the world. The only jus­ti­fic­a­tions I can offer for the impact that this par­tic­u­lar hor­ror has had upon me are these: that it did hap­pen in such a short space of time; that it was so delib­er­ate in its inten­tion to kill thou­sands of people; and that it was right there on tele­vi­sion for every­one to see, in almost unend­ing minute-by-minute coverage.

Ulti­mately, though, it all comes back to the fact that these events have made me appre­ci­ate how small Planet Earth really is. As indi­vidu­als, many of us may not have any dir­ect con­nec­tion with what has happened, but the untold thou­sands of lives lost — in a coun­try that sends and receives people from all corners of the world — means that the effects could reach sur­pris­ingly close to home. Even if that isn’t the case, the fact that this dis­aster has been repor­ted upon via a huge num­ber of per­sonal accounts on the inter­net means that we are able to gain a uniquely human per­spect­ive on events, moreso than at any other time in history.

In the search for the pos­it­ive, we can start by reflect­ing on the fact that, from Paris to Prague and Beijing to Ber­lin, much of the world is com­ing together to show solid­ar­ity. Hope springs eternal for the human race. Let’s get on with it.