tp209.xml

tp209.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-03-10

Toward a More Perfect Union


The profile image of a neatly dressed young New York
businessman giving his reaction to the first 9/11
attack on the World Trade Center is permanently
trapped in the world mind. Hunching forward, he frames
the lower left edge of the astounding video of the
second attack. For a few seconds he is everyone on the
planet as he stops talking, sits up, and turns to look
in perfect astonishment.

The world paused on 9/11, like a pendulum poised at
the top of its swing. The towers went down, a
crumbling hole appeared in the Pentagon, and the
irrefutable pictures shot around the globe again and
again and again. People said, Everythings changed?.
But the change was hard to define, inward and eerie,
like a crisis of faith. Everything had changed for
everyone.

The world had suddenly and collectively lost its faith
in an earthly superpower. Just as the explosion of the
first atomic bomb showed that a barely imaginable
technology was real, the destruction of 9/11 showed
that the United States itself was not inviolable. What
the United States does next makes a great deal of
practical difference to the planet, but the central
myth is dead.

And not a moment too soon. The world has real
problems, starting with racism and climate change,
Durban and Kyoto. The world can solve its problems by
working together, without superpowers. Let us not
grope around for the next one. We all entered the
world naked, unable even to speak our own languages.
We will all leave it dead. Meanwhile, we have
unprecedented access to thousands of years of
collected thought and instant communications. We can
make peace. We can end hunger. We can learn if we
will. Lets do it.