Remembering 9/11

Originally posted by me here

9/11 has to be part of the Oxford Dictionary for sure. I mean, Google made it and the last few years have seen the literary geniuses who edit and monitor the “Bible” of word meanings add words that range from ‘sexting’ to ‘OMG’ and ‘LOL’. (read  more here). I say simply that simply because I assume that the rational our pundits applied was the “high impact or increased usage” of the word. 9/11 did more than that. It had an aftershock which would change the very fabric of the world system.

For the Martians in the crowd, 9/11 refers to twin plane crashes into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11,2001 (9/11 see?). It was the brainchild of our now dead (or  alive) psychotic Islamist pseudo-God, Osama Bin Laden. That is all for you guys. Now back to the rest of the poor homo sapiens who are all too familiar with this weird smirking guy we all have seen on TV for almost a decade now.

So what was the first reaction? For me, the first thing I remember sitting at home in India was the newspaper headline, “America Attacked!”(Creative eh?). For 9 year olds like me, the whole kill people to prove a point theory the above mentioned psychopath propagated was a bit beyond what my brain could process. In the coming years though I would see first hand examples of how twisted people can actually get in the form of communal riots, strikes and political wars. But that is common in some form or the other in most parts of the world today.

On a global scale,2 different types of changes spread. The first was the more obvious and required change; security measures around the world. Airports  have been at the receiving end of many who think their new measures invade privacy. A few cases here and there have been a bit twisted but its better to be manhandled than be blown  up in an aircraft right? I mean, that is the best we can come up with in these situations. I mean people must realize that not everyone is either travelling for pleasure or business. We now have to keep in mind that there are those with simpler motives which include either taking hostages, recording videos wearing black masks and AK-47′s or even crashing an entire plane right through a building. The reason? A bunch of repetitive religious gibberish.

Security cameras deserve a special mention. Structures from embassies to high schools adopted these “monitoring” devices so as to ensure everything was under control. For some I would agree these were required but in schools, this simply encouraged any hormonally charged rebellious teen to find the camera’s blind spot and then grin maniacally at his/her achievement.

The second and more disheartening change I observed was the rekindling of the War over Religion. In India, most people built it up as a Muslim vs Hindu fight while the rest of us Christians, Sikhs, Jains and other minorities got involved once in a while. We didn’t need 9/11! We Indians have been happily hacking against each other for so long now! Everybody swore revenge at everyone while everyone else died. A vicious loop of insanity, murder, insanity, blood, insanity and insanity ensued. No, insanity did not paste itself on its on the other words. I guess I’m among those naive people who don’t understand the whole revenge theory and its various benefits. The sad part though was that it religion that once again was the main “motivator” for the violence. A quote for the uninitiated:

“Delusion arises from anger. The mind is bewildered by delusion. Reasoning is destroyed when the mind is bewildered. One falls down when reasoning is destroyed.” -Bhagavad Gita

The blood of the innocent have no reasoning.

In America and other parts of the world , an Islamic hate wave spread. Korans being burnt and anti-Muslim protests spread like crazy. Extremely intelligent folks started branding all Muslims “terrorists”. Sikhs in some parts were attacked cause they looked like “fuckin’ Arabs! ” Ignorance and intolerance that was primarily born out of fear spread to many places across the world. Even some Christians, most recently the maniac in Oslo , considered this to be a war on Christianity of some kind. People of an entire religion were blamed for a crime done by fanatics who are more ungodly than anything else that has ever stepped onto the face of this earth.

In the issue of Islam, I have talked to only a few Muslims in my life but through them realize that they too hate these diabolic nuts like hell. The damage caused to their faith is huge but they realize that people react because they too are deluded by certain sections of the mainstream media. But the truth is, people are not as intolerant as we think. During my stay here, I’ve met a certain section of Americans who seem to understand that terrorism has no faith or alliance of any kind. The perception of all Americans being fat-bellied rednecks who spit out racial slurs at the speed of light is just another stereotype that all races face. Ignorance born out of fear.(While talking about stereotypes, check out this hilarious  song by YouTube’s highest subscribed channel)

So what did 9/11 teach us? That man nobody is safe as long as we stay curled up pretty inside our own comfort zones and keep wishing that everything just goes away on its own. The world can no longer function under the perimeters of individual nations. It begins on an individual basis when people start with the simple yet so uncommon “respect” situation. You might not necessarily like somebody’s opinion or their outlook but that does not give you the right to discriminate. Intolerance lays the seed for discontent and snowballs into something worse. Till the point that you think the other person is right inside their own confines and it does not interfere with the well being of other humans, we must learn to love and respect them. That however does not mean we empathize with those who in the name of falsified doctrines turn to slaughtering people. I guess as  a Christian I am supposed to say that forgiveness is the way forward. But I personally believe that those who intentionally take another’s life for no fault of the victim’s, then they lose the right for their own.

We can’t always stare and wait for time to mend things, can we? If injustice has to be wiped out, we must first try and change things in our daily lives. Not by a raising arms, but by initiating dialogue. Discrimination of any kind, be it race, origin or religion, must be destroyed. We are only strong as a community because individuals can be wiped off easily but a force made of peace loving humans is too hard to diminish.

“All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.”- Former IBM President Thomas Watson

There are some who say 9/11 cannot be compared to the atrocities that have been rampant in so many countries for so long or that the actions taken by the American government after the war were simply outrageous. There is truth in those statements and that is disputed. But what has to be remembered is that it is only after 9/11 that people started viewing these matters as  a global problem instead of local happenings. 9/11 opened our eyes to the bloodshed  that has been existed for so long now. It was our awakening to the cries of those who died while we slept oblivious to their pain.

People are still dying. The most recent being the blasts in Delhi on the 7th of this month. With each attack, our desperation and frustration reaches a new level. How can we unite under one banner if more of us keep getting blasted apart like mannequins at a shooting range!

So remember 9/11. Remember the fact that for so long the world has always been on the road to destruction simply because people were just too scared to join hands together as one. Never before has the need for a united spirit among us humans been so high. The Arab Revolutions of 2011 have been the first indicator of people trying to rid themselves of the old order. Change will come but only when those who seek start changing themselves.

Our freedom can only be won together.

Alan Jackson’s beautiful song in memory of 9/11
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gPHnadJ-0hE?rel=0