The Worldwide Contagion

Note: Airstrip One's Promethean Darios wrote these thoughts on the repercussions of the 9-11-2001 World Trade Center disaster the day after it happened.

From a world media and collection of leaders from various nations who claim to have been rendered ‘speechless’ by the events that took place yesterday, we have already been presented with masses of spin, rhetoric and pointless speculation that are already whipping up a frenzy of manufactured consent. For those of us watching the events unfold live via the very media channels in question, there was indeed a brief period of silence for a short period after the two towers had collapsed and the extent of physical damage had been realised.

This silence was all too short — for as soon as a handful of facts could be established, even before the enormity of what has happened — and still continues in New York with the rescue and recovery attempts in progress — had sunk in, a massive vacuum was left which was filled almost immediately by interpretations and opinions for our consumption. The hawkish language of Bush and Blair at this moment leaves me feeling cold. The reaction of London — or at least the financial district — on today, Wednesday 12th September leaves me colder still. The city held its breath yesterday, waiting and watching — expecting to be the next target (as it could still be). Now it appears that no such event will be imminent, the city goes on just as it did on Monday. Not with a sense of grim ‘get on with it’ determination that might be expected from the famous home of the ‘stiff upper lip’, but instead a blasé ‘this is the way we’ve always done it’ behaviour of automatons. Many people here are asking questions about who it happened to and who made it happen, but I detect a conspicuous lack of questions including the word ‘why?’

Many educational psychologists have argued that there are two — sometimes simultaneously experienced — stages that often occur prior to learning something. A period of fear, and a period of confusion. We certainly find ourselves now in the aforementioned periods, but I wonder — will there follow a period of learning? The reactions of the leaders of the Anglo-American axis suggest to me that unless cooler heads prevail any period of learning will remain a long long way away, probably only after we see history repeated again with a similar tragedy in the future.

But we are assured by the powers that be that such a thing ‘cannot and will not be allowed to happen again’. The strong hints at major military, intelligence and governmental/legislative action seem to indicate that the people who are means to this end blindly seek to cut off one of the hydra’s heads. Like the influenza virus, the problem has many heads, and new ones grow in the place of those that are severed (such as the virulent strain that attacked chickens in a most horrific manner in Hong Kong a few years ago). That the hydra in question has already displayed several of its various heads over the course of the last decade, (such as the growing protest movement), appears to have passed commentators and analysts of Tuesday’s events by.

At the best of times it may be difficult to identify causes — or sometimes even distinguish them from effect. But I think a reasonable case can be made here that whoever finally feels the weight of the American anguish upon their neck, regardless of their background, ethnicity, creed or nation will only themselves constitute a single symptom of an underlying disease. An etymological understanding of the word disease distinguishes the two components into dis - ease as in not at ease; something interferes or changes where it has not been welcomed. Anglo-American-European foreign and economic policy has changed or interfered in many places around the world where it has not been welcome. The world exists in dis-ease. The proposed ‘solution’ if it involves extinguishing further human lives — and in particular, if it involves tolerance of so called ‘collateral damage’ will contain in miniature the problem it set out to solve — and so we see a horrifying realisation in terms of human memes, understanding and life, of Von Neumann’s ‘Catastrophe of the Infinite Regress’ in quantum physics. Von Neumann was referring to the problem of using one quantum system to observe another. Any instrument used, (including the human nervous system), constitutes a quantum system and will affect the outcome of the observation. If we observe events through the same tired old reality tunnel, we can expect the same results again and again. The same interpretations and perceptions leading to the same actions that generate the same responses that are exposed to the same interpretations…… ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, the said person or persons at whose door the blame will be laid will share various traits, beliefs or attitudes with a large number of other human beings. The bigoted and jingoistic media storm that has already been generated has indicated that any such commonalities will likely be seized upon as rightful indicators of dubious intent and demeanour. The same mistake that led to this shocking loss of unique and now forever lost human lives will, it seems, be repeated again. And again. And again.

As a wise person once said, "… it is not the fool who makes the mistake, but it is the fool who repeats it."

— Danny Weston, aka Darios

originally published on September 13, 2001
page re-created on May 29, 2006
page updated June 18, 2006 19:53 EST

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