MORNING MOURNING
Saturday, September 11, 2021
Truth, we’ve been told, is the first casualty of any war …
Twenty years ago today, we were all ‘in the news’ as it was happening – first we heard about it, then we were glued to our screens at homes and offices – we didn’t leave the room for fear we’d miss out on something. The retaliation faux-wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, every conspiracy theory has run its course, and now we are fixated on vaccines and returns to norms vis-à-vis the truth vis-à-vis the pandemic of the unvaccinated. Meanwhile, the developing world/3rd world continues being devastated by COVID-19. So, the importance and connection to a sunny September morning twenty years ago seem small in comparison.
When World War II horrors happened, they were reported after the fact on radio and lagged even longer as print media got the stories. By the time of Vietnam, real-time and same-day reporting was commonplace, and we got word of events soon after they happened.
So what is different today?
Twenty years on, what has changed?
Real-time means just that, as it is happening.
Some might argue ‘everything changed,’ while others declare ‘nothing changed.’
Most observers would agree; they’re both right.
Through all the vitriol and grief, humanity is recovering. Not everywhere, but whether you are waging climate war or vaccine war or political war, the sentiments of citizens are changing in every corner of the world and across demographic/age boundaries.
Old is no longer irrelevant.
Young is no longer disengaged.
Bitcoin trends and crypto wars are not the hula hoops and Blockbusters of the 21st century. These are speed bumps along a trajectory that will colonize the moon and Mars, converting our planet to something the Jetson’s and Gene Roddenberry would never have imagined.
Societies that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, so our history books teach us. Belief systems and politics aside, our hopes for a non-waring civil society the world over have overlooked the human-nature elements of conflict that defy reason and rules. Humans are evolving as a species that is only 200,000 years removed from caves and fighting off sabre-tooth tigers.
We’ve come a long way, but we’ve not come very far.
Twenty years from now, nobody under 50 will remember 9/11.
Twenty years from now, the horror of 9/11 will be a historical footnote eclipsed by new atrocities, new on the scene perpetrators and pandemic(s) laying waste to our sense of stability and equilibrium.
Milestones of history are lost to history – partly because governments choose to re-write them as they wish to remember them. They know, as politicians know all too well – we have a short attention span, we have faulty memories, and when messages are blasted at us often enough, we’ll believe just about anything.
Truth is faintly involved …
Instantaneous has new meaning – it’s ordering from Amazon, asking Skip the dishes for dinner delivery, live-streaming work and binge-watching leisure.
Numbed we are, to the reality of what is on the ground around the corner or far away.
New horrors around the corner, each surging wave, or variants of disinformation infecting ballot boxes everywhere.
Still, despotic governments are ‘business as usual,’ and climate activists will tell you the world will end at 9 PM, 9:30 in Newfoundland.