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What is the truth that has been revealed to us?
by Jean Bethke Elshtain, October 2001
The events of September 11 have profoundly shaken us. But have they changed us? That remains to be seen. Perhaps it is the Augustinian strain in my thinking that tells me we ought not expect too much -
not even from the effects of such a cataclysmic tragedy. There is always a tendency in human life - each individual life and our lives with and among one another - to 'backslide,' as I learned to call it as a child.
Our wills are weak. The terrible truth may be too much to bear.
What is the truth that has been revealed to us? First, that we had grown complacent about our way of life. True, we might not see the level of growth in our
mutual fund account or a rise in the stock market for a quarter or two, but that we anticipated. We were convinced, however, that things would chug along unchanged and uninterrupted for the most part. Our
complacency is temporarily shattered. What emerges from the rubble may - may - be a keen awareness of our finitude and our inability to control events. We may - may - as a result, grow more grateful for the very
ordinariness of things.
Gratitude and complacency are profoundly different attitudes. One permits us to take things for granted; the other compels us to recognize, each and everyday,
and to be profoundly grateful for, life itself: and life's simple pleasures: a passing smile, a friendly greeting, the aroma of coffee in the morning, a child's delighted squeal, a friend's reassuring voice over the
phone.
Second, we had forgotten, or many of us had, what it means to be a neighbor and a citizen. We weren't called upon that often as neighbors because we were far
too busy rushing to and fro to tend to neighborliness, whether as one who offers help to a neighbor or accepts that help. Offering and receiving help implies an acknowledgement that we need one another. We have been
enjoined for many years to see ourselves instead as little sovereigns in our own domains. Sovereign selves neither need nor solicit help.
As for citizenship: given our widely shared conviction, before September 11, that politics was either sordid or boring or both, it made good self-interested
sense to ignore it and to adopt a cynical attitude toward any notion of civic duty or responsibility. We paid scant attention to those among us charged with the public responsibility to help keep us safe and secure
in our homes, schools, places of work, and neighborhoods. No more. That awareness is seared into our collective consciousness as surely as a hot branding iron sears the rump of a ranch animal. The result may - may -
be a perduring awareness of the fact that we are indeed our brothers' and sisters' keepers.
We are not all called to be heroes. But we are linked by bonds of civic affection. A terrible tragedy effaces all distinctions. The minimum wage custodian and
the $500,000 a year broker find themselves in the same boat. They are threatened and terrified and lean on one another for help. This was an attack in America and because America is in many ways the world - people
from over 60 countries were killed in the attack on the World Trade Towers - it was an attack on humanity.
Before September 11, Americans from Main Street in Iowa and New York City were separated by a huge gulf. Now we are all Americans. That means we are all
citizens. We recognize our ties to, and responsibilities for, one another. We rightly honor our much-derided politicians as they rise to the occasion, from Mayor Rudy Giuliani to President George W. Bush. We are so
grateful to know that, as a friend of mine put it, "there are adults in charge." Does that mean we will henceforth put our shoulders to the civic wheel? Go to the polls in larger numbers? Insist that
schools take up what we used to call "civics" in their curricula?
Terrible wounds to body and spirit are as likely to corrode the fabric of life as to enhance and ennoble it over the long haul. Will the goodness we have seen
in the wake of the attacks have staying power? Maybe. Let us hope. That means tending explicitly to how things are going with us even as the horrific memories of September 11 fade, as they must, into the background.
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