September 17, 2011

Normally I do a pretty good job of shielding myself from the ambient emotional emanations. You grow up in one of the world's biggest cities and you instinctively keep other people's thoughts and moods out of your head. But when millions of people are all focusing on one single sad and tragic event, the blue vibes become hard to resist.

Last week marked the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the air was full of ghosts.

On September 12th I was asked where I was and what I was doing on 9/11 and despite having related it here in this blog, I was vaguely offended at having been asked. The person who asked was not someone who I have a close relationship with, or even like. After swishing it around in my mind for a while I think the best way that I can articulate it is that in talking about horrific events, we get to decide how and when we talk about them and should not be quizzed in order to satisfy an idle curiosity.

In this era of online disclosure of our every passing thought, there still needs to be some decorum, some respect, some boundaries.

September 11, 2001

I woke up on September 11, 2001 with a severe hangover. In less than two months I would find myself thrown out of my home and things weren't going well at all. Rather than interact with a woman who would do nothing but criticize and find fault, my routine on the evening before my day off was to rent several videos, buy a six pack or two of Leinenkugel and stay up all night drinking and watching mindless entertainment. When I stumbled into the living room that awful Tuesday morning I found my children watching CNN - one of them quickly told me that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. My first thought was that a small private plane had clipped one of the towers. The news reports were confused and the images unclear. But it quickly became evident that a full-sized jet airliner had plowed into one of the Twin Towers. While I sat trying to make sense of it all, while we watched the coverage, the second plane hit and the chaos multiplied. The day only got worse.

The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were an image that I grew up with. From the third floor of St. Pius X, my elementary school in Rosedale, Queens, we could see the towers being erected 20 miles away. Visits to Manhattan frequently included a jaunt to the top and the view of an endless horizon. For several years I worked summer jobs and later a full time gig in New York's financial district literally in the shadow of the towers. On one occasion, while employed as a mail room boy, I ran out with my co-workers to see a man walking a tightrope between the two. They were a duo of hulking, yet elegant, giants, always looking over my shoulder, always a part of the skyline; we grew up together, the towers and me.

On September 11, 2001 I quickly was assured that none of my family or friends were killed or injured. My brother, New York City Police officer and my cousin, a New York firefighter were nowhere near the devastation, none of the family lived or worked in Manhattan. Despite this, I felt a certain helplessness, a sense of being set adrift as the city that I always have considered my home was so mercilessly attacked. Nine months later during a visit to family I had to pull my car onto the shoulder to weep as I saw the gaping hole in the skyline.

Ten years later...the world, our world will never be the same

Ethics

Although most people don't want to admit it, ethics are a personal thing, a line which has on one side that which is acceptable and on the other that which is unacceptable. Perhaps you read the first sentence and wonder why I believe that "most people don't want to admit it". Mainly because for most people ethics is not strictly personal, but is taken wholesale from a book. At least that's what they say, while at the same time abiding by their own personal code. In my view, those who say plainly that their ethics are personal are more truthful, or at least aren't deceiving themselves. Now those who claim to follow holy book ethics and actually do it are equally truthful, but my observation has been that most people claim one set of ethics and even judge society by that set, while in reality holding to a completely different ethical set.

A good (if exaggerated) example of this is the movie gangster. Oftentimes the mafioso claim to be Catholics, attend mass, and have religious icons around their homes, yet their lives revolve around crime. Even beyond the egregious example of crime, loyalty and respect are the rules by which they live, not the holy book on the coffee table. Even beyond the fringe and the fictional, how many Christians live by the pacifistic turn the other cheek, love your neighbor ethos of Jesus? Instead, how many of them are actually living by their own framework of right and wrong while paying lip service to Christian ethics.

So what happens when one set of ethics are espoused and another set are acted upon? One result might be guilt. An individual takes action that is in the best interests of their family, nation, business etc but that action is proscribed by their chosen holy book, so they feel bad about it.

Another direction might be the path of absolution. If your deity is one of the more forgiving ones, any action contravening said deity's commandments will be forgiven, so act out with impunity and you'll be welcomed back into the fold. Or you can take solace in your belief that all men are frail and fall short of divine expectations and resign yourself to failure...once again hiding behind absolution.

Why not take an honest, analytic look at the circumstances of life and craft your own ethics? If you going to live by a set of rules, why not a set of rules of your own devising that fit into your own culture, your own uniqueness? Some might say that this would be playing God? That we have no right to set up our own set of rules in competition with those set up by an all-knowing creator. I would answer that if you're not following these rules but looking for loopholes and detours around them, you are doing the same thing. But the greater issue is to question whether these rules have indeed been handed down by a deity at all.