tp177.xml
Title
tp177.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-03-03
TomPaine Story: Story
THE QUESTION
In the storm of emotion resulting from these dreadful events ñ horror, rage, grief, fear, bewilderment, desire for revenge ñ calm and objectivity are naturally far to seek, and it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. Yet even now there must be some thoughtful Americans asking themselves, ""Who could hate us enough to do this to us? And what have we ever done to deserve such hatred?"" These are difficult questions to ask, let alone answer. Both the asking and the answering require an ability to see the world through other people's eyes which Americans, notoriously, lack. This insularity must be at least in part an accident of geography and should not be imputed to them as fault. It is, nevertheless, a crippling disadvantage in dealing with the world outside one's own borders.
The writer Sybille Bedford tells how she was approached by a drunken American in a bar in Mexico complaining that the locals wouldn't drink with him. ""I'm only trying to be friendly,"" he said. She replied: ""They don't want you to be friendly. They want you to be polite.""1 It may seem eccentric to suggest that good manners are the key to the proper conduct of international relations. But the willingness and the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and see with their eyes is the beginning and end of good manners. And good manners, the humblest form of love, is ultimately what prevents the world =ollapsing into a state of Hobbesian savagery.
There seems to be some debate at the moment as to whether Israel's helot population of Palestinians, harassed, humiliated, bullied, starved, shot at, trapped in their ever-shrinking ghettoes, did or did not dance in the streets at the news of the attack on America - and if so how many did and how many didn't. Interesting questions, certainly. But there is another question, much harder to ask and to answer: ""If I were a Palestinian, wouldn't I be dancing in the streets?""
How many are now asking themselves that question? And what answers do they find?
In the storm of emotion resulting from these dreadful events ñ horror, rage, grief, fear, bewilderment, desire for revenge ñ calm and objectivity are naturally far to seek, and it would be unreasonable to expect otherwise. Yet even now there must be some thoughtful Americans asking themselves, ""Who could hate us enough to do this to us? And what have we ever done to deserve such hatred?"" These are difficult questions to ask, let alone answer. Both the asking and the answering require an ability to see the world through other people's eyes which Americans, notoriously, lack. This insularity must be at least in part an accident of geography and should not be imputed to them as fault. It is, nevertheless, a crippling disadvantage in dealing with the world outside one's own borders.
The writer Sybille Bedford tells how she was approached by a drunken American in a bar in Mexico complaining that the locals wouldn't drink with him. ""I'm only trying to be friendly,"" he said. She replied: ""They don't want you to be friendly. They want you to be polite.""1 It may seem eccentric to suggest that good manners are the key to the proper conduct of international relations. But the willingness and the ability to stand in someone else's shoes and see with their eyes is the beginning and end of good manners. And good manners, the humblest form of love, is ultimately what prevents the world =ollapsing into a state of Hobbesian savagery.
There seems to be some debate at the moment as to whether Israel's helot population of Palestinians, harassed, humiliated, bullied, starved, shot at, trapped in their ever-shrinking ghettoes, did or did not dance in the streets at the news of the attack on America - and if so how many did and how many didn't. Interesting questions, certainly. But there is another question, much harder to ask and to answer: ""If I were a Palestinian, wouldn't I be dancing in the streets?""
How many are now asking themselves that question? And what answers do they find?
Collection
Citation
“tp177.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed May 19, 2024, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/775.