5th Anniversary of 9/11 (Part II)

Je Me Souviens
Lest We Forget
Those who neglect the past are condemned to repeat it.

Anything I do say will be used against me. Labelled uncaring or overbearing or melodranatic or reactionary. An incitement to riot or revolution or otherwise counterprogressive.

Any move toward world change is held suspect in the light of this petrified New World Order. A post-9/11 world rife with terrorists, malcontents, upstarts, usurpers, and the like. A world in which four colours -- green, yellow, orange, and red -- relate how safe it is to go outside. Just say it, it's never safe to go outside. The world is no longer a safe place. Joke's on you, it never was.

They say that people who live in glass houses should never throw stones. I live in the world, and all I have are stones to throw. I say more here, online, than I do in the world because I have only stones to throw. Here, if I shatter your world -- the precious glass bubble you call home -- you have made the decision. If you're talking to me in the world, I will censor myself, finding out what you think and feel first before I tell you of the way things are.

The world has never been a safe place. Security, for all intents and purposes, is a farce. Not everyone can have a Secret Service detail to establish a perimeter about them to ensure that nothing bad will happen. Not everyone is trained in the ways of firearms, swordsmanship, or hand-to-hand combat. Not everyone is a lawyer, able to defend oneself from incursions by the law. Not everyone is a philosopher, able to argue their way out of coercion. Not everyone is a salesperson, able to see the deceptions that underscore the phrase caveat emptor. Not everyone is a healer, able to undo the harms we bring on others or ourselves. Not everyone is a teacher, fending off ignorance at each turn. It is for these reasons we must all rely on each other, it is in this that we build our security.

The world is no longer a safe place. Ironically, it never was. Attempts to make the world safer have only led to more insecurity. The events of five years ago are as possible today as they were then. What, then, of the security measures, programs, and initiatives instituted since that infamous day? All for naught. The mandate that brought the events of 11|9|01 to the world have not changed.

The climate of disparity and discord between the powers that be and the powers that would be has not changed. The command of dollars and nonsense has not changed. Education, understanding, and inclusivity has not changed. Regard for "others" has not changed. Value of human life has not changed. These words, my thoughts and suspicions and the creeping admission of rot within the world has not changed. I have changed. I control only myself. I no longer drive, I take the bus, ride my bike, and walk every day. Every now and again I bum a ride, reducing the footprint of the person sitting next to me. I've replaced all of my 60 W incandescent bulbs with 12 W fluorescents. I read more and watch TV less. What effect will changing myself have if I have no changes in others to show for it?

External forces continue to induce desire in the people whom I associate with. While I actively search within for what motivates me, the total command of external desire, a crushing tide of conformity, washes across the world.

Oft stated that everything changed that one day in September, it has only galvanized that there will be and ever shall be more of the same.

More oversight, government or otherwise.
More technology, to monitor and shape behaviour.
More disparity of wealth.
More advertising.
More commerce.
More fundamentalism.
More divisiveness.
More alienation.

With these things, maintaining artificial sense of balance, there will also be less.

Less hope that the future will be better.
Less food on the table.
Less autonomy and freedom.
Less opportunity for growth.
Less art and creativity.
Less caring.
Less new information.
Less transparency.
Less light.
Less change.

There are many victims to this reality, though none is so proud as to claim the mantle of victor. No-one will admit that, often, where there is oppression, the oppressors wear ties. Such admission is too familiar, structured as desirable. To strike against the monolithic "right" of progress, justified by the established powers, is self-destructive. Any
who can claim priveleige, the same priveleiges near universal among industrialized nations, are party to its justification. I include myself in this.

I admit that to change the world for the better I must be willing to concede much of what I have become accustomed to. As a Canadian, by virtue of geography, we are able to produce much of what we consume. Other nations are not as fortunate. I must also, then, be willing to support development in other parts of the world, providing access to that which I take for granted.

The space between the comfortable design of contemporary nations of priveleige and those of destitution and despair is so great that it ensures that there is no recourse against the great nations. "Others," and any rights guaranteed them, cannot overcome the insurmountable expanse. Only from above, from the higher echelon, can change be made in this world.

Understanding what they need, those "others," and not forcing change upon them. Power must be distributed in service of needs as they arise. the power that industrialized nations wield must shift from imposition upon "others" to operation in service of those "others." The former mandate has not worked these past sixty years. An inversion, shifting from force-feeding industrialization to underdeveloped nations to permitting them to grow and subsist by their own devices and natural evolution is a more stable mandate. The safety and security of the world may well hinge on this admission.

On this anniversary of immense destruction, an event replays in the minds eye for a moment. Each person remembers where he or she was when it happened. The event reverbates differently in each corner of the globe, having one effect among those sympathetic to America, another to those who stand against America. There are those to whom 11|9|01 has had no direct effect, though the side effects abound. Anniversaries such as this are many: Pearl Harbour Day (December 7), Hiroshima Day (August 6) and Nagasaki Day (August 9), Halifax Explosion Memorial (December 6), DRAVAW (also December 6), 7|7 Bombing London (July 7), Guy Fawkes Day (November 5), D-Day (June 6), and so on. The point is, each of these events ended (or in the case of Guy Fawkes, would have ended) in massive destruction and loss of human life. What verifiable effect each event has is only discernible in the lens of history. Each time one of the anniversaries passes without remembrance, without discernible effect, the loss of life incurred goes unrespected. Its historical impact unnoticed. Given time, all events admit of consequence. Nothing is trivial. In this -- a lesson, things do change, only if we recognize, accept, and incorporate understandings achieved therein.