![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The meaning makers
Sep. 13th, 2001 12:20 amThere seems to be a powerful temptation right now to shape what's happened into some sort of meaning. To draw some sort of conclusion, some way of encompassing this. To conclude that the world is random, terrifying, and dangerous, that humans are hopelessly born to hatred, that the only way to transcend evil is to present the specter of still greater evil. To believe that the pretty illusions have been stripped away, showing us the darkness of the human heart.
But.
In the World Trade Center, a woman who uses crutches was carried out by co-workers, from the 64th floor to a safe distance from the building. One man carried her down 54 stories by himself, despite being urged by rescue workers - at the 20th floor - to put her down and go on by himself, because the building was secure.
Two men carried a person in a wheelchair from the 68th floor to safety.
These men are as much an example of our species as the bombers are. Their actions are as much a part of human nature as hatred and evil are. Humans are heroic, and evil, and brilliant, and stupid, and perfectly ordinary, and all the rest. In none of these traits is our "real" nature revealed.
The bombing does not define us. The bombers don't define us. The bombers don't define our future. It may be natural to try to identify the grand meaning, to find the bombing as significant and overarching in a cosmic sense as it is in an emotional sense. To believe that all of this means more than: terrible things sometimes happen.
But terrible things happen.
Full stop.
It doesn't have to mean anything.
But.
In the World Trade Center, a woman who uses crutches was carried out by co-workers, from the 64th floor to a safe distance from the building. One man carried her down 54 stories by himself, despite being urged by rescue workers - at the 20th floor - to put her down and go on by himself, because the building was secure.
Two men carried a person in a wheelchair from the 68th floor to safety.
These men are as much an example of our species as the bombers are. Their actions are as much a part of human nature as hatred and evil are. Humans are heroic, and evil, and brilliant, and stupid, and perfectly ordinary, and all the rest. In none of these traits is our "real" nature revealed.
The bombing does not define us. The bombers don't define us. The bombers don't define our future. It may be natural to try to identify the grand meaning, to find the bombing as significant and overarching in a cosmic sense as it is in an emotional sense. To believe that all of this means more than: terrible things sometimes happen.
But terrible things happen.
Full stop.
It doesn't have to mean anything.
