Understanding 9/11 Symbolically

Invited Commentary on Dr. Ikuro Anzai’s Lecture:

“Facing the Past Faithfully”

by Anita Doyle

18 October 2001
Mike Mansfield Center Conference:
The Experience of War *
University of Montana

Thank you, Dr Anzai, not only for this frank exposition of your country’s valiant struggle to remain true to the principles of its peace constitution, but as well for your many years of unstinting devotion to the cause of world peace. You provide a most inspiring example for us all.

I would like to speak briefly of the situation in which we citizens of the United States find ourselves, as a result of the events of Sept 11th, and what facing the past faithfully could mean for us at this troubling and dangerous juncture.

The grief of the thousands of families who lost loved ones in the destruction of the twin towers and the Pentagon is a grief they share with hundreds of millions of co-mourners. We move through our days, even now, five weeks later, with grief and anxiety as invisible companions. For many, if not most Americans, the shock of the attack on New York and Washington was made all the worse by a genuine bewilderment that such virulent enemies had appeared from out of the blue. Who could possibly hate us this much? And why?

This vitally important questioning was a spontaneous expression of the need to pause for self-reflection before launching reflexively into a counter-attack. It was the first shy movement toward the possibility of creative synthesis that every polarized situation implicitly calls for. But it was disallowed and overrun almost immediately by officialdom: “They hate us because we’re a free society,” we were told, “and it’s as simple as that. Looking for how we may have contributed to this state of affairs is siding with the enemy. Either you’re with us or against us.”

Rhetoric that uses intimidation to stifle public discourse is the currency of the realm in any country bent on war. This is nothing new. Nonetheless, we cannot allow that intimidation to repel our efforts to find answers to our questions. Why do they hate us? What are the roots of terrorism such as this? Only in knowing this, can we possibly know how to eradicate the threat. As Dr. Anzai has so graphically laid out in his description of the extraordinary loss of millions upon millions of lives in the widening circle of violence that resulted from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the so-called solution of meeting violence with violence is, we must finally accept, no solution at all.

In the psychological worldview of the pioneering depth psychologist Carl Jung, the human personality- and, by extension, human culture - is made up of many disparate strands. Some of these strands are deemed acceptable by ego and society, and therefore promoted and sent to the front of the personality, while others are deemed unacceptable and so are relegated to the inner landfills on the outskirts of consciousness. Out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. But implicit in that saying is the recognition that whatever it is that is out of sight and out of mind is not gone; it is merely being overlooked for convenience sake. And there is the vague sense, too - isn’t there? - that this overlooking could have repercussions down the line that we just don’t want to think about right now. Jung noted that the contents of the unconscious that are not acknowledged and brought into consciousness occur outside of us as fate. Furthermore, he recognized that that fateful event could be examined symbolically for clues as to the nature of the unconscious elements that are pressing to be recognized.

Please bear with me as I attempt to explore some of the symbolic content of the events of Sept. 11th, in an effort to allow us to approach a felt-response to the question of why people hate us. We know through our experience with art, that an image is, indeed, worth a thousand words. It allows for a kind of understanding not always available through the intellect alone.

In the image now burned into our collective psyche of towers aflame and crumbling, with people falling out of them, we re-encounter an age-old mythic symbol. I wonder, Dr. Anzai, what the Asian equivalent might be, but here in the West, the symbol is variously referred to as the Tower of Babel, or the Tower of Destruction. In myth and story, it pictures a condition of the collective consciousness in which human ambition has overreached the limits of its own sustainability. It has, in effect, separated itself so far from its necessary foundation in the earth, that in the end, there is nothing for it, finally, but to be leveled, to be brought back down to earth.

The skyscraper is the defining characteristic of the modern cityscape. It expresses the positive, soaring sense of unlimited potential that is so integral to capitalism. It also casts a long shadow that in the last several years has begun to catch up with us. The obsessive focus on the accumulation of wealth for wealth’s sake has created vast, vast inequities in the world that are the breeding grounds of resentment and desperation, and that in a small segment of the population will inevitably lead to organized violence against the perceived oppressor. We acknowledge this in order to comprehend the mindset of our attackers, not to excuse them. The separation from the earth as imaged in the skyscraper is also played out in the environmental devastation that minds bent on limitless profit both inflict and ignore.

A general unconsciousness in the American populace about how our foreign policies and corporate practices and personal lifestyles affect the others with whom we share this increasingly small planet has meant that we have, for the most part, not been facing our past at all, much less with the kind of fearless fidelity that Dr. Anzai has called for. That failure is at the heart of our current predicament.

The first uniquely American illusion shattered by the destruction of the towers was, as everyone recognized, the illusion of our invulnerability. An especially mortifying example of just how deeply this illusion runs in our national psyche was illustrated by a television news report a few years ago of a violent hurricane which was then whipping the Florida coast. A reporter on the scene awaiting evacuation, encountered a couple of men who were proudly refusing to be evacuated. They told the reporter: “This storm can’t hurt us. We’re Americans!” Well, so now we know, we’re not invulnerable. We are exposed and vulnerable just like the rest of the world.

A second American illusion that has yet to squarely faced, is the unquestioned belief in our entitlement to all of the world’s resources. The lifestyles that we take for granted are lifestyles maintained on the back of the world’s poor. What we ought to regard as superfluous luxury is regarded as what we need and deserve. We do not question the reality that although we represent a small fraction of the world’s population, we consume the huge lion’s share of its resources. We are not bad people. But we do not question these things. We do not examine the effects of our unlimited consumption on real, flesh and blood human beings - mothers, fathers, children - who live in unspeakable poverty out of sight, and therefore out of mind.

In the first days and weeks following the Sept. 11th attacks, our grief opened wide the door to our native goodness as a people. This expressed itself in an enormous outpouring of generosity, sympathy and unifying fellowship. What is the meaning of this paradoxical blessing? How does it express precisely what has been missing in our relations with one another, and , as a country, with the world? Can we keep the door open long enough to face our past faithfully here and now? Are we willing to face squarely what is at odds with our native goodness as we behave in the world community? Are we courageous enough to “face things as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, so that a light may develop"† out of these events by which a way through may be found?

[end]

*The 2001 Mansfield Conference, "The Experience of War", explored the concept of war and the historical and cultural effects war has had on individuals and societies through time. Presenters at the Experience of War Conference discussed topics such as "Israel's Future: Challenges in Light of International Instability," "World War II Japanese American Internment Camps Re-Examined," and "Frontiers of War and Nation in Japan: History, Memory, and Asian War."

Participants included:

Ambassador George McGovern
The Honorable Yossi Amrani
Dr. Ikuro Anzai

†Quote from the I Ching, Richard Wilhelm/Cary Baynes translation.