9/11 and Breughel

September 13, 2006

Scott Rosenberg draws a connection between a Breughel and a photo taken on 9/11. He also points to one of my favorite Auden poems about the painting: Musee des Beaux Arts. The parallel between my feelings about 9/11 and the poem/painting are clear and raw. 9/11 was a horrific, tragic event. But it, like any event, is subject to perspective. As far away as I was (and am), with no one I am directly connected to lost, the event remains remote.

And I can’t help but think of how many tragedies of this magnitude and even greater befall other countries all the time. Rwanda: 800,000 killed by machete. The India earthquake earlier in 2001: 20,000 lives. The Indian Ocean tsunami: 230,000 lost. Americans dead since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” is almost as many as we lost in the Twin Towers. The Iraqi body count… no one’s sure, but likely 100,000 or more. What makes 9/11 special other than the happenstance of proximity and the puncturing of our smug “that only happens in other places” superiority?

And the spectacle that 9/11 has become– the television specials and the trotting out of the survivors like prized show horses, the speeches (from both sides) full of empty promises and the once-a-year interest that flashes across most peoples’ minds and is quickly forgotten– that sickens me and I want no part of it.
9/11 was America passing from overarching world power to participatory world citizen. It should have been a wake-up call to many things: an awareness of the immense diversity in our shrinking world, an interest in the truth of other cultures and religions, a commitment to making the world better rather than worse. Unfortunately, the most prominent legacy is needless violence and death. Most of us are disconnected and disaffected while the main event is prosecuted by neocon ringleaders to fulfill wholly external, personal, and profitable agendas.

It’s not Icarus who is scissoring into the water unseen behind us, but our future.

Tags: history, life, poetry, Psyche