Thinking back on September 11th

I wrote this almost a year ago when I was still trying to work through my feelings about the WTC/Pentagon bombings:

“I want to expand slightly on my statement on September 11th that ‘this is a human issue, not an American, democracy, or a freedom issue’. It’s not that America is the center of the world and, by extension, any problem that America has, the rest of the world has too. Certainly not. These terrorist actions are part of something larger than an ‘Attack on America’…that’s just too simplistic.

“As a planet, we’re trying to deal with the consequences of the Cold War, living in a single superpower world, and the dramatically increased power of the small group & individual, as well as the age old problems of wealth, poverty, oppression, freedom, religious differences, and just plain getting enough food to eat for the people of your tribe without ruining things for the generation to come.

“When you look closely at the various peoples of the world, we have many more similarities to each other than differences. We’re all dealing with the same problems, just from different perspectives. I just keep coming back to this photo of the earth rising over the moon taken by the Apollo 11 astronauts. Looking at that photo, the earth seems so small and fragile, like a soap bubble in the empty black of space, and I can’t help thinking that we’re all in this together, Americans, Afghanis, Saudi Arabians, New Yorkers, Australians, Israelis, blacks, whites, Asians, men, women, Moslems, Christians, atheists, Jews, etc., etc., etc.”

I don’t have anything more to say about it, I just wanted to remember the time, place, and personal feelings that generated it.