"America and the
world were rudely awakened from a dream of
invulnerability and security. Despite our spending
thirty million dollars an hour to protect ourselves,
a score of insanely committed angels of death,
offered their lives to attack a symbol of affluence
and power, and wound the heart of the world.
I will
wait at the threshold with a wounded heart, breathe,
and remember God."
- Shaikh
Kabir Helminski al-Mevlevi
I keep
thinking about our way of life, and how it may have
created enemies of the U.S.
I also
want to be capable of listening to our enemies. I
want to understand their complaints, violent or
otherwise.
I wasn't
surprised at the horrendous attacks on New York and
Washington. I think our way of life, predicated so
much on power and wealth, has much to do with the
attacks.
Over the
years, our way of life, extravagant by most standards
in the world, has removed us from the consequences of
our behavior on other people and places around the
globe.
Our
obsession with affluence, unchecked growth,
technology and the speediness of modernity has
produced a major disconnect in the American psyche -
we don't see the relationship between our way of life
and how it impacts indigenous cultures, the
environment, the climate and the planet.
We can't
even perceive this relationship. We think our way of
life and its rewards are inevitable, as natural as
water is to a fish.
We eat
food that we don't see grown, often times shipped
thousands of miles before it reaches our tables. We
wear clothes produced with slave labor in developing
countries. We drink coffee from Third-World
plantations where workers receive an unlivable wage.
We build houses with trees cut down from forests
hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. The
benefits we enjoy from our quality of life blind us
to its consequences.
Our
affluent lifestyle has allowed us to create a fragile
bubble of denial, in which we've insulated ourselves
from the devastating impacts of our way of life on
the rest of the planet and its people.
We pay
taxes, which in turn go to a military
techno-industrial complex that does our dirty work so
we can feel secure in the continuance of our quality
of life, righteously guaranteed by our government.
We buy
cheap gasoline made from crude oil drilled in the
Middle East, and declare war to guarantee our
addicting supply. The consequences, in addition to
creating enemies abroad, are that we create air and
water pollution, traffic congestion, designs of
autocentric cities that are unlivable.
To put
it bluntly, we have blood on our hands from this
quality of life that we enjoy so much at the expense
of others. The U.S. makes up only 5 percent of the
world's population, yet we consume more than
one-third of its natural resources. An elite group of
less than one-billion people now take more than 80
percent of the world's wealth. It's been said that
"six Africans go to bed hungry so one American
can have a weight problem." Globalization,
pushed by the U.S. government and its closest allies,
with the help of the World Trade Organization, World
Bank and IMF, unleashes tremendous misery on the
Third World. Many of these hundreds of millions are
quite aware of the role of the U.S. in sustaining
these inequities.
We, on
the other hand, remain in the dark.
Whether
we choose to stay clueless and in the dark because of
our individual and collective predilection for
denial, or because of the corporate media's
complicity in avoiding the truth, is irrelevant.
This
darkness, the ignorance of how our lifestyle affects
or harms others, is our bubble. When we throw our
garbage away, for example, we do not immediately see
signs or feel the effects of the massive landfill
near our neighborhoods. It goes away, out of sight,
unlike many developing countries where many people
live in or near the landfills for survival. Ours are
outside the city limits, covered behind hills and
valleys, conveniently removed.
Our
human "waste," at one time collected by
farmers to use as fertilizer, is flushed away in
water that could be used for drinking, never to be
seen or heard again. An indigenous person who values
the sacredness and preciousness of water, sometimes
carrying it for miles to use at home, would consider
us lunatics. The Chinese, in fact, view the West as
extremely wasteful and extravagant because of our
flush-happy practices.
Every
time we turn on an electric switch we are using
primarily coal or nuclear energy, not necessarily
conscious of the toxicity of either one. Since we
don't see, taste, feel or even understand the sources
of our energy, we remain ignorant of their impacts.
When cases of leukemia and other radiation-related
diseases finally emerge because of toxic power
plants, it still takes a long time before communities
make the connection between the toxicity of their
energy sources and the causes of their ill-health.
This is
the bubble in which we hold our precious way of life.
It's as if there has been this major conspiracy
designed specifically to transform naturally wild
earth-based human beings into deluded, addicted,
entertainment-obsessed, pleasure-seeking comfort
bunnies.
However,
slowly, this bubble, this illusory reality, is being
shattered. We are learning more and more about the
sweat and poverty of coffee pickers, whose wages are
going lower and lower as I write this. Chocolate is
being manufactured through child slave labor in Ivory
Coast countries as well as other developing
countries. We are getting more information about the
original manufacturing of our clothes, our tennis
shoes, our computers, our carpets - and it ain't
pretty. And, as I mentioned, our government's foreign
policies create misery for thousands and millions of
people throughout the world. So why are we so shocked
when a violent response finally comes back to us?
It's because we are in denial about our way of life
and the costs it exacts on the rest of the world.
Rather
than ask questions such as "How are we going to
strike back?" we ought to be asking:
1. Why
are we not interested in our government's foreign
policies, which serve to protect, often at the
expense of bullying other nations, our quality of
life?
2. Why
do we eagerly listen to our "leaders" and
media pundits without the necessary healthy
skepticism and criticism?
3. Why
do we insist on following the parade rather than
really thinking through the issues?
4. If
our way of life is so fantastic, why are we wildly
racing about just to meet our basic needs, and when
we finally do rest, there seems to be no time for
service, volunteering, social activism or artistic
pursuits?
5. Why
has coverage of foreign news become swept away by
more entertaining and lucrative news as sporting
events, stock prices, celebrity gossip, and the
pornographic thrill of the latest techno gadget?
Our
bubble, inside of which we've chosen to remain
blissfully ignorant of the world's sufferings, was
pierced on September 11.
Our
"enemies," whose messages have been
thwarted time and time again, have attacked the
symbols of our dream-like, insulated and seemingly
impenetrable paradise - America's acclaimed wealth
and power.
The
attacks pierced our dream-world bubble. The acts,
horrible as they were, are symbolic of the fact that
we are no longer invulnerable. A deep foreign cry, an
anguished cry that Americans in their pride of wealth
and power have refused to hear, has made itself heard
in a ruthless murderous act.
For a
resolution, we need a major shift in consciousness.
As Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the
same mindset that created them. We need to listen not
only to our own critics of the American dream, but we
need to listen to our enemies, who view and
experience the American dream as a nightmare.
Yet, it
appears we are not interested in listening deeply, to
really finding a lasting resolution with those who
disagree with us or suffer as a result of our
lifestyle. Instead our government is talking about
annihilating these "enemies" of the U.S.,
as if that's going to solve the problem. If terror
ever destroyed terror, we'd have been living in
paradise eons ago.
It takes
much more courage to sit down with an
"enemy" (a name we give to those we
dehumanize through propaganda and tough-talk just
before we annihilate them) and actually listen to
their story.
What
kind of sacrifices does it take to really listen to
someone? Time, practice, an open heart, a willingness
to be fair. If we actually saw the impacts of our way
of life, such as seeing a coffee-picker carry 70
pounds of beans on his back for miles for only 35
cents a pound (or choose your own example), wouldn't
it affect us?
Look at
how the best in America emerged when we saw and felt
the pain and tragedy in the pulverization of the twin
towers. The empathy was touching and immediate. The
courageous and heroic efforts were outstanding. Why
can we not see and respond to the other horrors in
the world, which are as insidious and much larger in
scale?
The
disconnect of the American psyche is so prevalent
that we cannot see or even begin to think about other
peoples' sufferings. Even the spiritual entertainer
Deepak Chopra confessed in a letter after the attack:
"I asked myself, ÔWhy didn't I feel this way
last week [before Sept. 11]? Why didn't my body go
stiff during the bombing of Iraq or Bosnia?' Around
the world, my horror and worry are experienced by
thousands or millions every day. Mothers weep over
horrendous loss; civilians are bombed mercilessly;
refugees are ripped from any sense of home or
homeland. Why did I not feel their anguish enough to
call a halt to it?"
Have we
learned anything from numerous indigenous peoples who
were annihilated because they lacked the tactics or
ability or power to fight back? It happened to our
own native Americans and it is now happening to the
Tibetans right before our eyes and we hardly notice.
And when someone does fight back, using the same
violence we use, surely it ought to be a wake-up call
that justice is out of balance.
Can we
stretch ourselves enough to grasp this interdependent
relationship, that our way of life is predicated on
the suffering of others? Until we actually feel and
taste that correlation, we will remain in that
disconnected, insular bubble. It's no wonder they
call it the American dream. It's a dream fraught with
horrors and shadows and bogeyman of our own creation.
What
sort of sacrifices would we have to make to really
listen to our "enemy"? Fairness in global
trade instead of the outrageous rip-off called
"free trade"? Would it mean advocating and
participating in genuine democratic processes and
procedures where everyone's grievances, needs and
aspirations are laid out on the table? Isn't that the
patriotic American spirit - the qualities of
generosity and understanding that we glowingly speak
about? Is that so difficult?
Or would
we rather sacrifice our civil liberties, accept
higher flight travel prices due to more security
measures? Or would we rather have more long traffic
lines because of more police checking our cars for
car bombs? Or higher taxes to satisfy an already
obscene $300 billion military machine? Already
numerous new bans and censorship and restrictions are
rapidly emerging (an "advisory"
discouraging the play of 150 songs on the airwaves
via Clear Channel Communications; "Politically
Incorrect" has been threatened to be cut off the
air, wiretapping, etc.).
I hope
we deeply feel this tragic event and get informed and
listen and read and talk and argue and listen and
encourage dissent (read the alternative voices rather
than rely simply on mainstream media sources). I hope
we let it penetrate deeply into our souls, and that
we reinvent such terms as security, defense, justice,
patriotism and freedom. And hopefully, let this new
understanding, with its evolution of profound loss,
grief and righteous anger, take us to a deeper place
so we can transform and use our talents so the
profound clarity and wisdom of the human spirit can
shine through.
Bob Banner is
publisher of HopeDance Magazine. He can be reached at
editor@hopedance.org.
Special thanks to Stacey Warde for clarifying my
views and word-crafting this piece.
