Exploring the Underlying Philosphical Constructs and Ideologies

While we struggle with such post-September 11th issues as what constitutes a declaration of war, the wisdom of preemptive military actions, the unsettled legal status of criminals/combatants/detainees, and the like, there is a pressing need to explore the underlying ideological conflicts that brought a collective global civilization to the currently uncharted battlefield of seemingly mindless destruction. For this, the Editor journeyed to a small town on the Maine coast; a town owned through acts of violence at different times by four separate sovereign nations (five if you include the Native Americans defending their homeland against all outsiders). There, I sought out Jim Stone, a peripatetic and highly quali- fied retired academic who agreed to probe some of the deeper issues relating to 9/11, and to address briefly some of the enabling conditions of global terrorism and what of enduring substance, if anything, we have learned from and since 9/11. Herewith, Professor Stone... —GSR

The stunned and still obsessive reaction to September 11, 2001, strongly suggests that blind faith in the impregnability of “the world’s only superpower” and a deeply embedded sense of the inherent superiority of American lives have combined with naïveté and ignorance of the place and nature of terror in much of the world. This particular brew of arrogance and ignorance is an effective narcotic for reflective thinking. As a people,we condemn the narrow, authoritarian brand of Islamic fundamentalism that spawns those capable of such random and seemingly arbitrary slaughter. We condemn those whose belief in the infallibility of religious and ideological dogmata serves as a transcendental justification for the atrocities they commit. In a virtual parody of “constructions of the Other,” we condemn their mindset, their mentalité, and their acts, simplistically identify ourselves as their opposite, and remain triumphantly comfortable with the certainty that those we have demonized are the evildoers, we the enlightened owning the moral high ground.

Not unlike terrorisms, fundamentalisms are legion, but are not restricted to the religious ideologies of those who accept the infallibility of revealed scriptures. Fundamentalisms of any ilk—political, economic, social, ideological, or religious—inevitably lead to violence in some form, as absolutist truths do battle over the bragging rights to bigotry. The fact is that there are many contending truths, that “Truth” has many mutually exclusionary histories, and, thus, that all truths are infected with fallible self-interest (individual and corporate). Fundamentalisms are the possession of none, not exclusive to a particular ideology, society, or religion...tragically and universally available. Fundamentalist capitalism globally exacerbates the gap between the well-off and the poor, far beyond the point of criminality. Fundamentalist social engineering evolves into statist utopianism.Narrow, legalistic focus upon human intentions provides a convenient rationale for state terrorism in which innocents are knowingly slaughtered and their killers’ glib denial of intent sanctions the atrocities. In short, fundamentalisms, which invariably package and commodify “the Truth” in easily consumed binary bits of unambiguous fantasy, produce and perpetrate “truths”which can be such only owing to their extreme distance from any recognizable human experience. “Choose,” they say. Choose “X” or “not-X.” And if you choose wrongly, your life is fatally false or forfeit (contrast Mark 9:40—“he that is not against us is with us.”)

All fundamentalisms forfeit freedom and its co-conspirator, ambiguity, for the certitude of (unimpeachable) human authority sanctioned by transcendent “truths” which are invariably manipulated by the authorities sanctioned by them. This vicious cycle encompasses the practices of the Taliban and all others who, themselves frightened by uncertainty and ambiguity, would suspend legal and moral constraints upon their will to power and lust for clarity where none, ultimately, can be had.

It has been rumored for some time that the truth will make you free. The danger of such pietisms, however, is that truths, regardless of their alleged genesis, are always someone’s, the actualization of which will violate and kill rather than liberate. No individual, no society, no civilization yet has found a means to show that the asymmetry between knowledge and ignorance can be overcome. The infinity of ignorance and the finity of knowledge effectively reduce all “truths” to contending truth claims; and, as we have seen throughout history, contending truth claims directly or indirectly result in tyranny and violence.

It is widely held that one possessing power is potentially dangerous. However, more dangerous still is the good man with power; and most dangerous of all is the good man with power who possesses the truth. A conclusion such as this is mad gibberish to fundamentalists of every ilk, despite the fact that the evidence for its sense is readily available historically and in the current situation. After all, who is potentially the most dangerous? The leader of the only superpower or the dictator of an embargoed, debilitated Middle Eastern state? In reflecting upon this statement...instead of rejecting it out of hand...it becomes clear that it is difficult indeed to determine critically which of the most dangerous man’s capacities is, in fact, the most dangerous. Is it his claim to have access to transcendental truth? Is it his being actually a moral man according to the standards of his time and place? Is it his possessing power, the capability to prevent or cause change (to put it most simply)? I suggest that it is precisely the structural inherence of power, goodness, and inerrancy that occasions the greatest danger, and that goodness and the possession of the truth are but modalities of power (moral and epistemic).

However, this “most dangerous man” never possesses power. Power which is not sanctioned within a particular social formation, not unlike morality and knowledge, can have no effective existence. The autonomous individual, fétiche of the bourgeois revolution, is a fiction, a failed attempt to overcome the fact that human individuals are little more than complex, changing matrices of relations which have never transcended their material conditions of possibility, nor their genius for ambiguity.

In these ways, corporate entities are non-different from individuals. They, too, exist interdependently with other corporate entities in a reciprocal web of relations that limits and makes possible their corporate life. Not unlike human lives, the “lives” of nation states, societies, corporations, cultures, etc., are derivative, occasioned and enabled by forces and conditions over which they have but minimal control. At some level, humans understand that “to act upon is to be acted upon”; that one’s existence is fundamentally reciprocal and dialectic. They also understand that denial of interdependence is delusional.

In the 21st century, which began when the process of globalization was first identified (following its de facto genesis after World War II), unilateral action on the part of corporate entities is no less firmly grounded in “cuckoo land” than was and is the autonomous individual. No superpower can long ignore the fact that its domination is partly grounded in the consent of those it oppresses. Corporate entities, as well as political, social, and economic organizations, can no more escape the reciprocal implications of their actions than can individuals. Globalization initially identified a tendency toward uniformity and integration within and among competing economic, cultural, political, social, and ideological entities. Now it has become a master metaphor for multiple, conflicting processes: creeping uniformity, commodity imperialism, quest for cultural hegemony, creation of an information elite, secularization of transcendental socio-religious values...all defined in relation to and interdependent with the extreme resistance they encounter.

So, what potentially have we learned from and since 9/11? At worst, very, very little. At best, that we are no longer alone, never were alone, and never can be alone; that we, individually and corporately (in all of its senses), were condemned to social, political, economic, and cultural interdependence at birth and that is the primary material condition of the possibility for life; that we exist within a world of reciprocal relations, not a universe of simple cause and effect; and that the strength of these ties that bind is beyond our autonomous control, and increasing at warp speed.

—James Stone

“On September 11th we learned how perilous our times are and we pay a heavy price for that knowledge. Vulnerable to suicide bombers full of hate, we are forced to look anxiously on every side for new attacks that could come anytime. Fears have made our land of the free less free. It is more important than ever that we protect the historic rights of the innocent while keeping on the alert against sly enemies who would destroy us if they could.”

—Historian Daniel J. Boorstin is the librarian of Congress emeritus (CC ’67).

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“After September 11th, at least for a while, we learned what it is like to live in a society where people are courteous, kind, and considerate to strangers, friends, and even their own relatives. Then we forgot.”

—Judith Martin is the author of Star-Spangled Manners: In Which Miss Manners Defends American Etiquette [For a Change] (CC ’88).

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“September 11 taught us to doubt a little of our invulnerability. It reminded us, too, that the spirit of evil is no match for the human spirit. And it cautioned us to remember that while a just vigilance remains the best defense against acts of hate, only love can conquer hate itself.”

—James W. Symington represented Missouri’s 2nd District in the US House of Representatives from 1969-1977, and helped establish the Library of Congress’ Open World Program in 1999 (CC ’72).

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“The United States has awakened to the fact it is no longer an island separated from world problems. We are as vulnerable as others to terrorist attacks, global warming, and anti-Western, ethnic, and religious turmoil. While we are implementing numerous security measures, sometimes at the expense of civil liberties, we have failed to date to address our broken public health infrastructure. Will it take another anthrax attack, an outbreak of smallpox, or contaminated water supply to wake us up to the fact that a strong public health system is essential to protect us from bioterrorism?”

—Ruth S. Hanft focuses on public health issues, including hospital preparedness for national emergencies (CC ’90).

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