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by Elinor
Hoefs Re-thinking the Unthinkable On October 31, 1755, lots of seeds were already germinating which would produce the world we know. The formation of the modern nation-state was well underway; forces of repression and liberation were in place that would lead to the American and French revolutions; the codification of the scientific method and the attendant development of technology was proceeding nicely; Goethe was six years old; Mozart hadn’t even been born; nor had Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Novalis, Hoelderlin and that lot that would cause such ferment in the world of words. Was any of that changed or even accelerated by 11-1? Maybe, but doubtful, and who can say? What, then, of 9-11? Was it only a big exclamation point, the real ending a year late to the bloodiest century in history? Or was it somehow period/new-paragraph that would shock and spur us on in some new direction? Maybe, but given our present belligerent behavior doubtful, and who can say? Sophistry, ever ready to lend a hand to the essayist in trouble, could lead us to spin out all kinds of theories:  The
case could be made that one of the primary, unexamined qualities of the past century was a
flight from emotion. Benumbed, we fled into more and more violent and louder movies;
television, ever-desperate to hold our jaded attention, degenerated into a thousand fast
cuts per minute; the "high" arts and their whorish hand-maidens, the critics,
screamed and ripped and tore and dissonanced their way into a "value-free"
patchwork of piebald posturings. Thus maybe the horror of 9-11, like a kind of global
electroshock, might jolt us into a re-embrace of purer, simpler, quieter emotion. Perhaps
an age is coming in which again ladies faint and gentlemen sniffle into their kerchiefs as
our arts and entertainments once more limn the growth of love’s thorny vine.
The
case could also be made that 9-11 will provide massive fodder for our old, violent
Neanderthal selves, and the model the world learns from the New World turns out not to be
the consumerist wonders of Free-market America but the vault-tight security of Fortress
America with control and repression reaching deep into the culture.
Or
the case could be made that we will continue on our bumbling way, stumbling through the
dark night of the soul, much as the 18th century did, with all threads that
were already present on the day before 9-11 continuing to be woven into the crazyquilt of
human history.
Probably only the fool entranced by his own sophistry would bet on any but the last. Having spent all these words only to confirm once more the cloudiness of the crystal ball, we find ourselves pretty much where we were at the outset. With one exceptional idea: In our comparison we’ve overlooked the big difference between 11-1 and 9-11, and that is natural vs. manmade. Lisbon, whatever its long-term effect, surely gave people pause concerning the stability (or instability) of the earth. The World Trade Center gave us, at most, pause concerning the ephemerality of things human. While Lisbon may have had some humbling effect, and may have further piqued the curiosity of the already curious natural scientists immersing themselves in the ways of the physical world, it’s possible that 9-11, for all its horror, only served to distract us from the far greater problem facing us in that world. So busy do we become now in trying to deal with what is perceived as an intra-human menace (the "war on terrorism") that we largely ignore the growing threat stemming from our massive and continuing mistreatment of the planet itself. The earth, though occasionally in its organic life causing us some problems (such as Lisbon), has on the whole proved a beneficent parent, one which has given much and taken little. Line up all the natural disasters in recorded history and the total number of deaths would be minuscule compared to those resulting from our own, self-inflicted violence: 200,000,000 war dead in the 20th century alone. What has the planet done to us that even approaches that number? Nothing, of course. That is, nothing yet. And there perhaps is the real rub of 11-1 vs. 9-11. Lisbon was a geo-reminder. 9-11 was a social reminder which if anything only made our geo-myopia worse. On November 1, 1755, the earth hiccuped. What will become of us and our vaunted culture when, finally, because of our mistreatment of its delicate balance, the planet vomits?
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