Posted by sol on September 27, 2001, at 0:02:13
In reply to Terror's emotional effects, posted by Noa on September 25, 2001, at 17:39:27
Forgive me if I don't comprehend what is going on here. If this is a close-knit group of Internet friends, I might now intrude by sharing my thoughts about something that causes a lot of trouble in my heart. I don't share with many here a history of diagnosis for some psychological disorder, but I have suffered mentally for many years. And I have been to several sites to follow discussion about the "new war" (what's so new about war?). I hope I may share what I feel in these times, though my dreams be plagued by nightmares.
Embarrassment, guilt, shame, loneliness, fear. On a microcosmic level, that is what I feel. But it is difficult to separate the microcosmic from the macrocosm. I don't even know if that is a good idea; it seems like a sort of denial to separate feelings from cause, especially at a time like this.
The events of the past month have plagued my nightmares all my life, I just could not always see them so plainly. For years, I feared when I saw urban areas, and knew my fear to be well founded. I was terrified throughout the last half of the Cold War for what happened on Sept. 11; when my. government backed the bombing of a Parliament building in South American and supported a coup to install a terrorist regime in Chile. That was 1973.
By some ruse of my imagination, I have at times isolated my microcosm of feelings from the macrocosmic events that let me feel what I feel. I have always known that the cheap fuel that lets me feel powerful and independent comes at the expense of people in the middle east - and that my nation was corrupting the political processes of nations there to insure a ready supply of cheap fuel here. I am embarrassed now for the way I fooled myself - for the cheap thrills I enjoyed.
I feel guilty that I could not or would not resist a culture I knew to be wrong and fool-hearty. I feel shame that I did not embrace the resistance I always knew was necessary, instead leaving those in less fortunate lands to falter, struggling in isolation. I regret that did not use my opportunity to foster a struggle that in its fairness, kindness and rightness would recruit allies in every land. Instead, I let my need for a simple life atrophy, and abandoned my desperate brothers and sisters in the Islamic world to a struggle where they had no effective allies but the most extreme militants.
I feel fear - in part that I will fall victim to someone fighting for essentially the same cause I forsook. But I feel more fear for what my own people might do. I am terrified that for refusing to join the mandatory national unity and wave a flag in a bloody celebration of the ultimate triumph of western values, I will be secretly targeted in war that knows no rules and considers extra-judicial execution to be the right if a victorious army.
I feel stupid, that for one day, nay, for years, I let psychologists call my fear of flying irrational. I knew in my heart that flying through the skies so casually was deeply offensive to many in the world. Rather than consider the feelings of others - of billions across Asia and the East - I let peer pressure convince me that flying is perfectly safe. I let myself believe those thrill-ride jet planes were toys, and denied to myself what I knew to be true - that they were dangerous weapons of mass destruction. I knew all along the airline industry destroyed cultures in the lands were bauxite is mined, in the valleys were hydroelectric dams produce electricity to smelt bauxite into aluminum, and in the desert lands were sultans are propped up as rulers if they agree to plunder oil to fuel the jets. But I did not wake up from my fool's dream until the weapons were turned to destroy the cities I called home.
Those towers made me tremble the first time I saw them, but again, I repressed a well founded fear. Knowing in my heart those towers were idolatrous monuments to pride and greed, I followed the guidance of foolish propagandists called pop psychologists. I deceived myself by climbing to the top and enjoying the view. It is lonely at the top. Now my compassion for those thousands who died can't seem to cloud my rational mind. Maybe what is going on the financial districts of New York, Chicago, Singapore, Malaysia, Tokyo - maybe that is something very, very wrong. I suffer for those who died, and who were wounded and for their surviving families. That these traders died, along with passengers on jets and some military people, does not make their free-wheeling market economy any more right, though. I have suffered with survivors all my life - many who were otherwise scorned and ridiculed as outcasts of the western way of life. I don't endorse terror and never have. I have opposed mass killing of civilians since I was a child.
Why did I wait for this? I am so ready to evacuate. I wonder why I wait for the next alarm to get up and walk away from this very wrong way of life.
poster:sol
thread:11763
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010915/msgs/11792.html