Concerning the World Trade Center Tragedy: A Paper Written Seven Hours Post Disaster

By Benjamin M. Walsh, September 11^th, 2001

It is astounding what all our culture has begot. Here we are, calling ourselves the greatest race and civilization Earth has ever known, God's 'children', and something like this has to happen. I'm not just talking about the tragedy of this whole mess... yes, the fact that many has been, what, INSECURE enough to do something like this, masterminding or participating in the destruction of both World Trade Centers AND the Pentagon after what must have been several years of planning, creating a vast, well-hidden conspiracy that ended in the deaths of many thousands of everyday people just like you and I is shocking, not to mention humbling, enough... but the fact that, less than seven hours later, it has already been turned from a tragedy into a sort of shockfest let's-see-that-building-implode-again-on-instant-replay-from-a-slightly-different-camera-angle MEDIA EVENT, is the icing on the dang cake. for how many of us out there was seeing the World Trade Center collapse once, or, better still, simply hearing that it DID, was not enough? How many of us out there were desperate for up-to-the-minute updates every two seconds, even when there really is very little to report? I admit, those with loved ones living in New York or Washington or Somerset County have reason to be anxious... but what difference do the latest updates make to the rest of us? It is almost demeaning to the tragedy done today and its many, many victims to allow the rest of us glued to C-SPAN or MSNBC or even WQED, waiting for what? The newscasters to tell us who to blame? Is that how we must deal with the feelings aroused by this tragedy? The fact is that it has happened, and if we want to avert this in the future then we will have to strike it at its roots, which lie in our culture's shortcomings, instead of at its fruit, the terrorists. Yes, perhaps we should lock them away and shut down their operation so that they cannot do this again, but that won't bring back the dead.

Bear in mind that I have often thought that our practice of executing people as per 'an eye for an eye' is rather foolish, as, between their conscience (if it works) and the justice that is God (God does not hold grudges, but that doesn't mean that God doesn't believe in responsibility for one's actions), letting them live is the worst 'punishment' we can inflict upon them (though, in the end, the one most useful to them, as well). However, our culture has become so self-righteous & shallow, that death seems the worst thing to inflict upon someone, and it seems to us that someone who has committed such an atrocity is no longer 'human' but something much less; namely, a source of the 'entertainment' that is late-breaking news on a criminal trial. And so, instead of trying to determine WHY they did this and help our society to grow by this understanding, we kill them. And then they are made into a sort of martyr by their new generation of 'students' and 'apprentices', which is also silly because if they really believed so strongly in their cause, it would be a lot more emotionally trying and even 'heroic', not to mention a good deal more effective in the long run, to LIVE for their cause instead of both DYING and KILLING for them.

And from all this you see that I am no better than the rest of you in this. I, too, was horribly fascinated by this event and all that it implies. Which is why I wrote this paper in the first place. Thus, perhaps the most noble and therefore best thing for me to do here, is to offer my condolences to those who have been victimized by this tragic event. Perhaps the best that we can hope for, then, is that this event will be the one to finally clue the human race in to the shortcomings of our culture. And then, perhaps, this sort of thing won't have to happen again. To victims of this tragedy and of others, I offer my sympathy. Let us hope that people will someday find a better way of making a difference.