9/11, unity, and the chattering of chipmunks

The clarity that crisis brings is not necessarily our friend

Posted by David Roberts at 5:10 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Read more about: politics | national security | environmental movement

I've had a post rattling around in my head for a while now, and the anniversary of 9/11 seems like apt moment to finally have a go at it.

One of the most uncomfortable facets of the attacks on 9/11 is that as horrific as they were, they were also, for lack of a better word, bracing. It sounds awful to say so, but on some level everyone recognizes it. So much of our daily life is spent in a rut, plodding through workaday details. Crisis has the effect of stripping away the inessential, heightening our senses, bonding us together, and bringing about a certain transcendent clarity that is intoxicating. It's a common effect, reported by those who have been through car wrecks, robberies, and most of all, war. War is a force that gives us meaning.

That feeling of transcendent clarity is the source of the much-discussed national, even international, unity that followed 9/11. For a while, everyone was on the same page. Petty differences faded; we were in it together. If we're honest with ourselves, it felt good.

Since then we have descended again into the doubt and dispute. Lots of people reflect back on 9/11 and miss that sense of unity. That's what brings someone like Stu Bykofsky to say "we need another 9/11":

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The "chattering of chipmunks." Disagreement, doubt, frustration. It's a drag. Bykofsky caught crap for saying it and had to take it back, but I think the sentiment is fairly common. I hear echoes of it when enviros say that the American public won't rally around the climate change (peak oil / biodiversity / oceans) fight until "another Katrina" happens. Indeed, responding to Bykofsky, our own Kit Stolz said: "I'm sorry, but somebody needs to say it. We need another Katrina -- now."

I also hear echoes of it in the endless, numbing calls for "an end to partisan bickering." There's even a nascent presidential campaign based entirely on "unity," with virtually no mention of policy.

I understand the impulse. I don't count myself immune to it. I too spent those days after 9/11 infused with a sense of righteous anger and tribal connection with my fellow Americans. I yearned for something or someone that could express those feelings, direct them to some great purpose.

As we all know, that never happened. Quite the opposite: our national sense of unity was squandered in an orgy of paranoia, militarism, authoritarianism, and upward redistribution of income.

Therein lies the rub. That tingly feeling of clarity is the brain's prefrontal cortex going quiet. It is a previous stage of evolutionary development, ruled by the amygdala, the lizard brain, a state in which everything is fight or flight, us or them. It is humanity freed of the vexations of Reason. It is a return to pre-modern virtues: heroism, strength, single-minded fortitude.

If 9/11 taught us anything, it should be that no matter how intoxicating that state may be, we should not trust it. It will not guide us wisely. When we recede, our vision also recedes. We seek out primitive battles, clear enemies. We enforce tribalisms and exclusions.

We face huge, intangible global problems today, problems of spatial and temporal scale our animal brains are not suited to grappling with. All we can do is try to work together, draw on every mind and every good idea, and seek non-zero-sum solutions. That means reasoning and arguing -- yes, the chattering of chipmunks, or as I prefer to call it, democracy.

It means stumbling forward half-blind, with false starts and compromised achievements. It means hashing things out through a frustrating fog of ambiguity, with no clear right and wrong answers and no promise of victory. That's the state humanity finds itself in. No sense wallowing in nostalgia for simpler times.

For story: 9/11, unity, and the chattering of chipmunks
8 Comments | Post a Comment

Nature?... or Culture?

What clarity of purpose? David, we were bamboozled by unscrupulous men who took advantage of a deep tendency in United States culture to seek violent revenge. The response to the attack six years ago was not about "lizard brains," it was about poor education, successful hegemony, a lack of a critical politics, and a deep failure in our culture. So many of us are utterly intoxicated with ourselves at the expense of the rest of human kind -- many enviros on this list included -- and it does us no service to naturalize this essentially cultural tendency.

Remember: Spain was attacked too, the Spanish responded with humanity and voted the war mongerers out of power in the very next election.

I'm all for the messy chattering of democracy, but let's at least begin with an informed conversation about the character of our reality. The clarity you describe is not instinct; it's bad learnin'.

We don't have to fight nature, here, we need to get over ourselves, take a cold hard look at what this nation has done to other people everywhere, recognize how we are all culpable, and try to rebuild on a foundation of decency...if such a thing is even possible after all these years of training otherwise.

Peace,
KC

by EcoReason at 5:57 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Thanks David. Strong post.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

by spaceshaper at 7:27 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Goose bumps

Wish I could write like that.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 8:17 PM on 11 Sep 2007

" ... AL-VIN!!!"

Yes, DR, chipmunkocracy is the way to go. But we need to have the patience to let all the chipmunks get through their time-consuming chatter. And we need to have the courage to live with the upshot, which is likely to be some sort of compromise not really satisfactory to anyone.

Much more efficient would be an enlightened dictatorship, the monarchy of a philosopher-king. The problem there is, there is no such thing as an enlightened dictator. And even if there were, as Lord Acton warns us, chances are the dictator will not stay enlightened for long.

Two quibbles:

Let us not give in to the prejudice that what is "modern" is clearly better than anything that preceded, or that "modern" people are obviously more intelligent than their pre-modern ancestors. Not all pre-modern people were tribalist troglodytes -- in the bad sense. Even the troglodytish Cro-Magnon cave painters at Lascaux and Altamira, and the ivory carvers who produced the Stone-Age Venuses, had brains as large and brilliant and creative as our own. And classical Greek philosophers and their Christian intellectual heirs in the Middle Ages venerated Reason at least as profoundly as anyone in the Modern period.
While there are unfortunately many signs of intoxicated bellicosity and the excessive influence of the "lizard brain" in post-9/11 America, we should remember that there was nothing at all violent or reptilian in the reactions of very many of us. Here in Manhattan, compassion, gentleness, shared sorrow and the desire to assist anyone in need were the common emotions. Downtown, every busstop, every firehouse and many a blank wall became shrines, richly decorated with pictures of the fallen, poems and expressions of love, flowers, candles. But GOD FORBID that there should be "another 9/11." Sure, we comforted one another, as best we could. Still, how could anyone reasonably suggest that we need another long episode of that grief-struck solidarity, just for the sake of unity?

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 10:05 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Awesome post

Kudos.

by kayser at 11:05 PM on 11 Sep 2007

Disgusting

It is absolutely disgusting that anyone would suggest that we need another 9/11 or Katrina or other disaster that might kill thousands innocent people just for the sake of unity.

I do not want to imagine what right-wing pundits will do with an "environmental" commentary like this. It severely undermines progressive efforts to improve our quality of life, bring about social justice, and protect and restore natural habitat.

by wiscidea at 7:24 AM on 12 Sep 2007

That's not exactly it...

I don't read it as David suggesting we need another 9/11.

I read it as "in order to save the planet, we need transcendant unity, which only big bad events provide...but we shouldn't trust that unity anyway because it can lead us in a bad direction."

His conclusion is therefore that all we can do is stumble around best we can and try to fix the problem in fits and starts.

by GreenMom at 8:48 AM on 12 Sep 2007

More Likely

We'll find a lasting commUNITY at the local level. The world can unite behind this concept as an effort to prevent global collapse foretold by 9/11 and Katrina.

by justlou at 10:00 AM on 12 Sep 2007

ADVERTISING POLICY

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