You know that feeling in sleep when you're partially conscious and not completely unconscious? You're not functioning but still lie prostrate while starting to awaken. That's where I was when I first heard that the World Trade Center was attacked. When I was thirteen I had a clock radio for an alarm that went off in the early part of the morning. While in this subconscious state I heard "the World Trade Center has been hit". As crazy as it might sound, I fell back asleep for another fifteen minutes or so and dreamed of plans hitting large buildings. I didn't know what the World Trade Center was or how it was attacked. But it was vivid. I woke up and told my mother who turned on the television to find the news on every channel. Commercial planes had been hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
I was in 8th grade at the time and had an early morning Spanish class. Most classes would open up with turning in an assignment, one or two people getting berated by Mr. Cepeda for not having the assignment completed, and on to rigorous linguistic training (which were also berated for). But that didn't happen this morning. This morning the TV in the portable room was on full blast. We sat in relative silence watching the footage. When one questioned if we would be doing anything else that day, Mr. Cepeda replied, "No, you need to see this. From this day forward, your lives will never be the same."
And he was right in more ways than one. Perhaps the infamous line from Morpheus in the Matrix epitomizes the feeling -- "Welcome to the Desert of the Real". I guess everyone has that kind of loss of innocence at some level. You get your first dose of reality outside of your own scope. For me I found there was much more than Spanish, Sportscenter, and Sunday church services. There was a great big world with many people who looked upon the United States with disdain and would wish harm upon its citizens, military and civilian kind alike.
I suppose every generation has a defining moment. For one it would be the assault on Pearl Harbor or Normandy or the bombing of Hiroshima. For another it might be the Kent State shootings or the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. or JFK. These events are so violent. As such, they shake a human being to the very core. They invoke what Slavok Zizek would call "the passion for the real". It doesn't necessarily take a person with a passion for the real to enact such an event. On the contrary, I think that often times these events are generated out of ideological difference. But the passion for the real truly comes when ideological difference clashes against ideological indifference in merciless violence.
In the aptly named, Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Zizek talks about how such an event opens up the desert of reality where we see beyond ideology, beyond media, and beyond whatever filter through which we view the world. Reality is brutal, cold, and utterly simple. In the wreckage of the twin towers, you see a bit of what reality truly is. As abstract as that sounds, I think that what comes out of viewing reality without an ideological filter are genuine human emotions--violent compassion and shuttering bitterness. You have compassion for the victims and their families. You have bitterness and hostility for the perpetrators.
Earlier this year Osama bin Laden was killed, finally. I considered writing this piece back then but held off for a number of reasons. I recall a number screaming that justice had been done while others wept, feeling a sense of peace. I don't know what justice is any more than Thrasymachus or Glaucon. I admit I felt a sadistic reward at the thought of his death, but wonder that I should ever rejoice at the death of another human being. I still have mixed feelings on the matter.
Regardless of how you feel about the attacks or bin Laden's demise, there's so much more to take away. The attacks transformed my generation and brought me into the desert of reality for the first time. But the value of such an anniversary is to remember those real human emotions, the compassion and love that poured out. It serves as a reminder to put off ideology and to look to one another with love and compassion. And if there's a lasting effect that 9/11 has had on my life, it's evident in two things -- I'm a non-ideological Christian and anti-partisan towards politics. The truth is that that message of the cross goes beyond the rule of any denomination or ideology. As flawed as a human being is, he (or she) should always strive to see reality for what it is and to see fellow human beings for what they truly are.
