Tag Archives: Sept. 11

First, Nothing – Then …. [Repost]

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{Originally posted September 11, 2021 — two years later, nothing has changed]

In the beginning, the Earth was a void. Just a roundish rock, really. Lots of volcanoes and other nasty things in the early times. How it came to exist, or more importantly, why it came to exist is a question to which mankind will almost certainly never have the answer. Some people are happy to simply believe that some spirit put it here and then planted humans and all the other biological forms. Whatever.

In my worldview, over an unimaginably long time, evolution took its course. Single-celled “creatures” formed, evolved … you know the story in general outline. That’s more than enough for most of us. We could continue to struggle with the question of how to reconcile those biological facts with the spirit mythology but, for me at least, that’s a waste of time. It turns out that evolution gave humans the ability to believe two or more inconsistent concepts at the same time. We live with the cognitive dissonance, partly by compartmentalizing. You can pray on your knees in your worship space on Sunday to the spirit of your choice (there are many to choose from) and then drive in your high-tech car or search for information on your computer/smart-phone and never give a thought to how both are valid. So be it. It’s who we are.

But on this day, this day of terrible memories, on which many say they are inspired to new hope, we should be reminded of the intersection of inconsistent ideas and what that can mean. Men claiming to be men of faith who believed we were evil incarnate decided to teach us a lesson. They used their “faith” to justify killing almost 3,000 people and had hoped to kill many more.

In truth, the actions they took on 9/11 led to many, many more deaths and much, much more suffering. The words of the prince in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet come to mind:

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords, too

Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punished.

Evolution produced the cerebral cortex in the human brain. Over millennia, homo sapiens became the Earth’s dominant species. With that came the capacity to change everything. We could do much more than just kill another animal or eat another plant to survive. We were way smarter than that. We learned agriculture, invented tools and machines, built enormous cities, how to fly in machines, how to write and share knowledge.

But there were hard times too. Times when food was scarce. Times when another “group” had access to resources other “groups” wanted. Dominance rather than sharing was apparently critical to survival and thus the prime instinct, to live on, led to competition, fighting, killing. More for me, less for you. I win, you lose. Too bad. At least for today.

Mankind evolved to be the smartest and dumbest creature on the planet. Able to perform miracles of learning and healing and loving, mankind also learned to hate, to fight even when the fight was self-defeating. To change the planet in ways that now make it likely to become uninhabitable. Yet, we continue. The same mistakes. The same hates.

Compartmentalizing.

Love your fellow man. Love nature. Then kill them both if you think it’s necessary to survive … or maybe just to have more. Acquisitiveness – another human trait. Get more stuff because more stuff is better than less stuff, and it shows other humans your superiority. Your dominance in the hierarchy. Humans are very invested in hierarchies. Animals, too, are invested in hierarchies and one might conclude that hierarchies are essential elements of life. But, of course, animals generally don’t just go invade their neighboring animals’ territory.

Is there another way? I don’t know. As a species, humans have the capacity to do the right thing. We’ve created countries, nation-states, wrapped ourselves in “national identity,” “ethnic identity,” “cultural identity,” “sexual identity,” take your pick. So many identities.

Identities help us know who is in our group and it doesn’t take much thought to see how this can be important in the world we have made. But identities are, by their nature, separating. Categorizing. If you’re X and I’m M, we’re in different groups and never the twain ….

So, here we are. Smart and stupid at the same time. Victims of our own intelligence. Suffering now from an unseen enemy, the coronavirus. Most of us are grateful for the science and scientists who brought us a life-saving vaccine. We are grateful for the healthcare workers who put themselves at risk when we are most desperate for their help and comfort. And some of us, a remarkably large number, believe in conspiracies, in dark images of evil people doing insane and immoral things. This group turns away from vaccines and other established public health measures and consumes instead known poisons and unknown other substances, placing their faith in politicians rather than scientists.

Those people walk among us. Many are our friends and neighbors. Many are dying. Yet they persist in believing the unbelievable. Compartmentalizing to prevent being told what to do or to have their “rights” diminished. These people don’t care much about the rest of us, though many often attend religious services and say many prayers. When there is a mass shooting, they send “thoughts and prayers,” but they resist meaningful measures to control violence, and the poverty and desperation that often precedes it, because … they have “rights.”

I am rambling so I will stop soon. I am distraught, I confess, at the idea that years of my inevitably shrinking future life are being stolen by ignorance and deceit. I’ll never get those years back. Neither will the victims of 9/11, the dead and the families and friends of the dead. Never get them back. The permanent silence that awaits us all draws closer by the day, and I wonder why it is that the smartest creatures on the planet continue to be the dumbest. I wonder why we can’t see and correct the self-destructive paths down which our evolutionary history has driven us. We can look back and see history. Other animals can’t. We can look ahead and predict the future. Other animals can’t. We don’t have to wait until the planetary water hole has completely dried up before figuring out a way to stop the loss. What is holding us back from using our intelligence to do what intelligence demands?

Maybe we’re just not intelligent enough. I don’t know.

Memories of 9/11

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As this day has progressed, I have, involuntarily, been drawn back to specific memories of that dreadful morning. I will share what I recall, hopefully accurately. I believe so.

I was driving to my office at the Alexandria, VA-based trade association where I was employed as head of the legal, industry affairs and government affairs departments. We represented what were then called travel agents, now known, more accurately, as travel advisors. I don’t recall how many employees we had back then. but it seems like 50 or so.

My cell phone rang, and our head of communications told me, in a somewhat anxious voice, that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. I said, “you mean like a small plane?” Instinctively, it did not seem plausible that a full-sized airliner could have flown into New York City airspace and collided with one of the tallest buildings in the world. It had to be an accident or a person committing suicide in a small plane.

I don’t recall what she replied, but it was clear that this was a major event that would affect the travel industry immediately, among many other things. “I’ll be right there. I’m close.”

When I arrived at our offices, there was much obvious concern. We now knew that there were two aircraft involved in New York and that another had crashed into the Pentagon, about five miles away. Our staff leader was in Europe, unreachable and in any case unable to get back. I was de facto in charge. Through a quick series of meetings, I learned what little had been gleaned from frantic news reports. With the rest of the world, we watched the collapse of the Twin Towers. I learned that one member of our staff had a brother working at the Pentagon. She was hysterical, understandably, because he was not responding to her calls and the reports indicated extensive damage to the building with fires and many casualties. A small staff group was with her offering such comfort and support as they could.

Six years before this, I had miraculously survived a cardiac arrest. One industry friend sent me a card that read, “Now, at least, we know you have a heart. Get well.” It was time, I realized, to be that guy, a calming influence against the chaos and panic that were setting in. My reputation for being calm and emotionless was required by the situation even though inside I was a roiling mess of concern, frustration anger and despair. Who would do something so insane? Why? Like everyone else, I had no answers.

I called a meeting in our large conference room. I decided the best path forward was to be brutally truthful. “I don’t know much more than you do about what has happened or why,” I said. “I believe, however, that everyone will be safest right now by staying in the office. I can’t make you stay. You can leave when you want to, but this is not a good time to be on the streets. I will be here with you until it is safe for the last of you to leave, no matter how long that takes. You are safe here. We will continue seeking information and will share all reliable information.”

I answered the questions I could and urged everyone to remain alert and try to work. The impact of the events on travel would be immediate and our members around the country would be looking to us for guidance.

After the meeting, one staff member came to my office to ask me to lift the policy I had put in place years earlier that prohibited possession of a firearm in the office. He felt we “need to be able to defend ourselves. They’re going to put nails and bombs in post office boxes.” I rejected the idea while trying to reflect understanding of the anxiety that led to the proposal. “Even if you’re worst fears are true, having a gun in the office isn’t going to be much help and could make everything much worse. Let’s just stay calm until we understand more about what has happened.”

As the day progressed into the afternoon with no more attacks, staff began to drift out of the office to make their way home. The brother at the Pentagon came out safe, to our great relief. Air travel was completely shut down by government order. For the moment, there was nothing for us to do realistically. When all were gone, I left too.

As the recovery began and information about the attackers and the ease with which they were able to bring box cutters onto aircraft was revealed, the President and Congress, along with existing federal and state agencies, went into action. Everyone hopefully is at least generally familiar with what all that led the nation to do, some great and some not.

For our part, our head of communications produced a brilliant idea. Seeing that the public needed to be encouraged to resume traveling as soon as it was allowed and working with American Express and the Airlines Reporting Corporation for funding, she proposed a Public Service Announcement using a famous figure, like an astronaut, to assure the public it was safe to travel again. Eventually, we arranged with Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, to participate in a filmed short subject. Commander (retired) Lovell was an absolute delight to work with. He hosted us for dinner at his restaurant, Lovells in Lake Forest, outside of Chicago where we discussed the plan for the PSA. After dinner, Lovell took us into his private museum in the basement where we saw many artifacts of the Apollo 13 and other missions.

Commander Lovell approved the short script I wrote for the PSA and met us very early in the morning at O’Hare Airport for the taping. The airport was under the tightest imaginable security at that time, but United Airlines, the principal carrier there, worked to get the necessary permissions for our access. We did multiple takes at the ticket counter; Lovell never hesitated to do what was asked of him. The only record of the PSA exists on a VHS tape, but my best recall is that we had Lovell approach the ticket counter to get his boarding pass, turn to the camera and say, roughly,

When Apollo 13 was in trouble, our best people went to work and solved the problem. Our country is facing another crisis and our best people are working to make sure you’re safe. It’s time to get moving again.”

He took his boarding pass and walked confidently through the security gate.

The PSA was seen by millions and, hopefully, was reassuring that America would indeed overcome the latest challenge.

Today, many ceremonies around the country have been performed to honor the memories of those lost to the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath. To those who question American resolve in the face of our current political turmoil, these ceremonies should serve as a reminder that We Will Never Forget. I know I never will.