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Farewell Flower Power, long gone
Journal of a Futurist - 13 October 2001
Citizens!.. A new awakening or the same Old Testament
Filed today for the Melbourne newspaper, The Sunday Age. Added is a personal account of today’s mood in Manhattan emailed to me (on request) by an old friend and longtime New York resident, Phillp F. You will see how helpful it was in shaping my response – thanks Phil.
Like the wrecking of the Berlin Wall, the incineration of the World Trade Centre has sparked a global chain reaction. In countless ways, both trivial and profound, people have been shocked into state of self re-assessment. "All this celebrity hoo-ha I’ve been churning out for yonks", notes the queen of Manhattan’s gossip columnists, "what a waste of a life". Or words to that effect.
Even those far removed from the scene are still in a trance. A longtime surfer mate in Byron Bay mutters: "All I want to do these days is go home and hug the cat". Will such a mood pass? Maybe, but not entirely. So many repercussions are still to be played out.
New Yorkers discovered a deep sense of community. This took them by surprise, as it did me, having visited the city prior to the strikes; finding it brusque and mercenary. Perhaps this blood bond will mark a turning point in the way its citizens relate to each other, and to their future visitors.
"Yes, people are nicer" reports a seasoned Aussie expatriate. He described a column of anti-war demonstrators marching in midtown Manhattan who turned a corner and saw a straggle of cops on duty -- and cheered them!
Having discovered each other, there has since been a struggle to discover the rest of the world. In the heat of the action, it was a shock to witness America’s bafflement. After the second strike, a CNN anchor wondered aloud if the electronics in the tower were interfering with radar on the planes. Later, the emails and the tabloids echoed each other: Why do people hate us?
There’s so much about America to love, especially its talented and spirited citizens, the courage of everyday people. But its foreign policy stinks … as US citizens might agree, if only they knew what it was.
How did this happen? The failure of a creative nation to make the connection, to see the lethal link between the policies of Washington and the rage of the doomed and disempowered? In this climate of re-evaluation – The Awakening - we can ask, where does knowledge come from? How is knowledge blocked out?
By turning trivial pursuits to an artform. By dumbing down, by denying the spiritual, by feeding on distraction. Perhaps the New Awakening will help us hold a mirror to ourselves and our relationship with the wider world. On Friday, Oprah conducted a talk-tour of Islam that would have been inconceivable prior to September 11. Her observations exceeded in tolerance and wisdom anything that’s ever emanated from the mouth of Phillip Ruddock.
Yes, the New Awakening has a disgusting side, such as the flag-waving, God-bless-us jingoism, that’s tainting most Western leaders.
At the grass roots, however, there seems to be a slow, dogged re-evaluation of America’s place in the world and the role of it allies. As a friend reports, who lives within sight of the smouldering rubble, and still wears a mask: "We’re unwilling to give an inch to the murderers-for-god, but now also unwilling to continue being led to the slaughter by the oil-addicts and the Israel-at-any-price policy".
And the slaughter continues. Notwithstanding the need to eradicate terrorism, the sight of missiles and B52s pounding the hovels of Kabul induces a sense of despair. The cause of Coalition may be just, but its method is mad. Or is it just me who is crazy? How can you win a war against terror with terror?
Why should millions of Afghanis, already scrounging in rat holes for crumbs, be uprooted, pursued and molested? It was not these people who installed the Taliban or incinerated the world trade centre. Where is the justice? Where is the leadership? How weird to be galloping through the dawn of a new millennium, while saddled with values from the Old Testament.
Globalisation means more than big markets, hot brands and cheap labour – it means asking how we can sustain our lifestyle in the face of the escalating impoverishment of the world’s ecosystems and its millions of unseen human inhabitants. Unseen, that is, until we roll out the carpet bombs.
Like traumatised New Yorkers, we in the West need to stop and take stock. The German mystic, Meister Eckhart, said that "we progress by stopping." Our own credo is that we progress by shopping. To obsessively pursue excessive wealth and cheap celebrity as a way of asserting our individual magnificence, while not even noticing the dispossessed until skyscrapers are in flames, is to commit a colossal atrocity.
Isn’t it time to change the game, so the evolution of humans can at least keep pace with the evolution of technology?
For the first time ever, New Yorkers are making eye contact with people they’ve passed in the street for years and never acknowledged before. That’s a start, seeing that all the streets in the world eventually connect to each other.
And now the email from the "seasoned Aussie Expatriate":
"Sonia" went to her house on Shelter Island last weekend, expecting a friend and her two kids to join her -- but her friend, who works at Mt Sinai hospital in occupational health, just burst into tears on the phone saying she couldn't leave home. Then Sonia visited a physiotherapist, for tennis elbow, and the guy talked about four patients, all over-achievers at work and exercise (running, tennis, golf) -- all dead because they worked at CantorFitzgerald on the top floors of the north tower. At {my son’s} high school curriculum night last night, I talked with 6 parents and each complained of sleeplessness, headaches, and ennui.
Everyone has a version of this -- edginess, fear of another attack they can't escape from, like biological or chemical. It's citywide post=traumatic stress syndrome, which classically takes a moth to manifest. Yes, people are nicer. A column of demonstrators marching for peace in midtown turned a corner and saw a straggle of cops on duty -- and cheered them! We make eye-contact with people we've passed in the street for years and never acknowledged before, but the eyes are tired, the looks exchanged an unspoken message of Yes, it sucks, a collective sigh.
Every day we used to glance to the towers as a homing device -- that's south. Now there's an ominous haze where the buildings used to be. Every morning, you check wind direction and brace yourself for the biting odour of burning plastic if it's blowing north. Down by the rubble zone, that smell has another sickly edge to it, of close to a million pounds of rotting flesh. Schools down there, the trendiest elementary school, PS234, middle school 89, and Stuyvesant High, all in Tribeca, have had PTA meetings at which parents scream No to reopening the schools. Some fear the pulverised asbestos particles thick in the dust, others can't face sending their kids back to a place where they saw people in suits jumping from broken 100th floor windows -- many parents stood with their kids to see the towers fall because they went to collect them when the second plane hit, which meant they were there just in time for the people leaping and the buildings pancaking.
Other than all that, more people every day are prepared to face re-evaluating America's place in the world. Unwilling to give an inch to the murderers-for-god, but now also unwilling to continue being led to the slaughter by the oil-addicts and the Israel-at-any-price policy. Several of the kids' schoolmates have relocated already -- back to Brazil, Minneapolis, or to the weekend house in the country. Realtors out of town report no rush to buy -- too much financial uncertainty -- but a flurry of calls to country town schools, from people switching from weekends in the country residence to weekends in the city, life in the country. Having any fun at your end?
From Brenda Elferink:
A quick thank you for your thought provoking session in Darwin yesterday. Thought I'd visit your website and now feel compelled to make observations.
I'm not sure many people look eagerly to the future - especially if we are comfortable with what we already have. Our basic instinct is to attack, push back and fight back. Only the "have-nots" feel the need to change. Most of us are frightened of the future, frightened of the unknown. While war is frightening we understand retribution/revenge and it isn't an unknown. The world (and Australia) is behaving - rightly or wrongly - the way it has for centuries.
And ultimately I don't believe bringing Osama Bin Laden to trial, to justice in The Hague or elsewhere will stop extremist Terrorism.
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