A Failure of Imagination

On the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, I refuse to wallow in self-pity. I will not watch the commemorations. I will not listen to the names of the dead. I will not remember the heroes. I will not live in sorrow.

I will not add a locks to my doors. I will not install an alarm system. I will not buy shoes that can easily be removed at airports.

I will not live in fear. I will not fear a woman in a head scarf. I will not fear an unattended shopping bag. I will not fear a man with a camera. I will not fear a person of unknown origin. I will not fear a person's name. I will not fear a person's face.

I will not fear what I do not understand. I will not fear a person's language. I will not fear a person's words. I will not fear a person's hate. I will not fear a person's god.

I will not live in ignorance. I will not respond to hate with hate. I will not respond to hate with fear. I will not respond to hate.

I will not seek revenge. There is no one left. It's over. The response of my government, acting in my name, has been shameful.

The appropriate response to violence is sorrow. Those who would send their message through violent means are in pain. They strike out in order to make sense of their lives. Focus provides meaning, and above all humans seek meaning for their lives. In the face of ignorance we seek simplicity. We seek answers to the fundamental question of our existence. It doesn't matter what answers we come up with. It only matters that we believe them to be true. And that we believe them enough to turn off the glare from the vastness of the universe that belies any possibility that what we believe could actually be true.

It's a scary thing to have even a suspicion of the depth our ignorance. To understand the vastness of the Mystery that is existence. A simple framework, whether it be Evolution, Religion, Socialism, Atheism, or an infinite number of other possibilities, allows us to come out of the cave. To plant vegetables. To make children. Without a working definition of reality, we have no way to orient the fact of our being. We realize that the Ultimate Answers are beyond human comprehension. Rather than spend our lives trying to know the unknowable, we happily subscribe to one of the many frameworks that are already out there, tweaking it on occasion to silence the voices in out heads.

In some cases a working definition of reality only works if those around you support it. That's why we have ritual. We go to church or pray or salute the flag or march. We often define ourselves by association with others. I am a Sikh. I am a Jew. I am a Shiite, I am a republicrat. I am a Quaker. I am a Pantheist. I am American, a Cuban, a Georgian. I am Japanese, Argentine, Nigerian. I am white. I am black. I am Maori. These definitions are largely arbitrary. Most are accidents of birth.

The key to understanding is to realize the depth of our ignorance. I don't know if there is a god. Or several gods. I don't know if the universe is composed of 13-dimensional strings. Evidence is irrelevant. Perception is irrelevant. We are such insignificant beings that gods and sacred books and large hadron colliders really don't even scratch the surface of possibility.

Knowing that the odds of any doctrine of reality being correct are staggeringly slight, the only rational response is to embrace the mystery. To believe that every possible definition has an equal probability of being wrong. We can then embrace any definition that lets people get through life. If we all realize that we're all just trying to figure it out for ourselves, the need to impose our definitions on others becomes less urgent and we can more easily accept people whose beliefs differ from our own.

The use of violence is never the right answer. The appropriate response to violence is sorrow. Each person who dies at the hand of another (and this includes soldiers and zealots), is denied the possibility of experiencing life. This may seem a tautology, but if there is any purpose to life, it must be to wonder at the very fact of existence. To deny anyone that opportunity is to is succumbing to a narrow view, to limit one's own wonder. If you are not able to tolerate the existence of others, then you are to be pitied. If your intolerance leads to violence, perhaps you should be isolated, but you should not be hated.

By living an exemplary life, we lead others to be more tolerant. Childlike acts revenge in the name of justice are counterproductive. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of peace. By refusing to accept that he was any less a man by virtue of his birth, his death was not a blow to his ideals, but rather ignited a fire of change that continues to this day. It's not necessary to impose your definition on others. Only to live by it with integrity.

This applies to people and to nations. If we determine to be a nation of peace, then those who attack us will be marginalized. It is not necessary to have arms and armies of soldiers. We simply need armies of peacemakers. Those who attack the peacemakers do not prevail in the end.

11 September 2011