[thechat] <no subject>

Dave McLean thechat at dwcreative.com
Sun Sep 16 13:39:14 CDT 2001


Hi guys, here's another one... just tell me if it's time to stop.

This is a an email that an acquaintance of mine sent to many of his peers.
I think his message is worth hearing too.  It's a personal reflection and
sheds more light onto the issue from yet another angle.

Like I said, if my posts are becoming tedious, please let me know.

Dave

"It seems wrong that the sun should be shining in these dark times. It would
have been a warm and sunny and beautiful day today... if today had fallen
before Tuesday.

In 1949 Theodor Adorno wrote, "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
That is how I feel now, in these days following something I really still
can't quite bring myself to believe. The world seems a joyless, cold and
dangerous place. It seems wrong to smile; wrong to enjoy the fine weather;
wrong, ultimately, to be happy.

Those of you who know me know me to be a person of words, someone who is
rarely at a loss for them and rarely without an opinion about something.
This week my mind has been a contradiction, a chaotic void, a usually active
mind struggling to find words that can describe this or make sense of it.
Today I concede defeat. There simply are no words, except those that perhaps
describe the absence of words. In my vain efforts there is a word that
seems, for me, fitting. Hideous. What happened on Tuesday was hideous.

It is, of course, natural to feel anger about these things. It is even all
right to feel anger. Anger can be cathartic, but anger is also a volatile
emotion. Anger is what led these men to do what they did, and so we know
that anger can destroy what is good. Even our own anger.

I fear for the innocent. I fear for the hundreds of thousands of
Muslim-Canadians who are just as horrified and appalled as everyone else at
what has happened. I fear they will face violence they do not deserve any
more than the people in the World Trade Center deserved it. I fear, too, for
the millions of innocents in Islamic countries now falling within the angry
sight of the United States.

It is in times of crisis that our principles are truly tested. Now is one of
those times. Let us hope that the response that does come will strike those
who were truly behind this, and that it spares the innocent. These are
delicate questions -- for if more fathers, sons, mothers and daughters are
killed, we run the very real risk of creating another generation of broken
human beings who have so little hope and so little to live for that they
would give their lives to murder thousands, even millions of innocent
people. It is easy to forget the innocent victims of American actions in the
rest of the world -- and there have been many thousands; the residential
neighbourhoods that were "accidentally" bombed in Baghdad; the shooting down
of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes in 1988. The men who flew those
planes to their doom on Tuesday were the products of accidents. Accidents
for which the United States government's only response was "We deeply regret
what has happened." An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.

Remember, too, that many much less fortunate people live with this kind of
terror every day, all over the world. The only thing that makes this
different is that the terror that is common place for some has hit close to
home for the first time.

And now? We thought that something like this was not possible -- now we know
the awful truth. Something like this is not only possible, but we are able
to contemplate much worse. The next time it will not be a plane, or even
five, or even ten, it will be an atomic bomb in a suitcase -- and when that
happens, there will be no rescuers to come pick up the pieces.

The lesson to be learned now is that for there to be peace and security at
home, there must be peace and security all over the world. We must do what
we can to eradicate poverty and suffering for humanity, for a safe and happy
human being is a peaceful one. This is a turning point for our civilization.
Ours has been a violent age. How we respond to this test will determine
whether we break away from this violence, or go down a much darker path.

It sounds like a cliché, but peace truly does begin with you and me. It
begins with a letting go of grudges, and stepping back, and giving people
space. It begins with sharing and compassion, with friendship, and genuine
effort to understand each other. There will always be people we don't agree
with -- but we must learn to be tolerant and understanding of one another
anyway. And that goes for everybody. One person at a time. Because the
alternatives to peaceful coexistence are simply too grim to think about.

So, before the week ends, take a few moments and thoughts for the many
Americans who have died and their family members who are now suffering. Take
a few moments for the people of many faiths and backgrounds and
nationalities who made the World Trade Center their workplace. Take a few
moments to greet and thank a firefighter or paramedic or police officer,
whereever you are -- too many of their daily sacrifices go unnoticed. Take a
few moments to do something nice for somebody you don't know at all,
somebody very different from you, a person of different ethnicity or social
class or dress.

And then, when you have done that, turn off the television and the radio,
put away the newspapers and the news magazines, and go outside with your
children, or your parents, or your brothers and sisters and friends... the
people you love. For in the end, they are the only things that truly matter
in this life.

Cheers,

-Stephen-
stephen at vodacomm.ca"

_____
"Email sent through Hotmail differs from most others emails because
 it is routed through the internet."

 - Victor Keegan, in "G2", The Manchester Guardian, 1 September 1999,
   explaining the security flaws in Microsoft's Hotmail service.






More information about the thechat mailing list