{"id":4968,"date":"2017-10-11T09:50:07","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T13:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=4968"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:33:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:33:19","slug":"reflections-on-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2017\/10\/11\/reflections-on-9-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on 9-11"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Sixteen years ago this past Sept. 11, I recall leaving my 9:25 a.m. College Composition classroom in Pullen Hall on a clear blue morning and, as I made my way up to the Campus Center, hearing the first reports of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.\u00a0 <\/span>The weeks following were filled with fear, sorrow, anger and not a small amount of self-reflection.\u00a0 <\/span>Not long after the events, in fact, I began writing a paper (which I later presented at a conference and published in \u201cThe Maine Scholar\u201d) that opened with a quote from Jean Baudrillard\u2019s \u201cSimulations,\u201d followed by this:<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Perhaps after the events of September 11, 2001 it will be impossible to read such utopian postmodernist rhetoric with the same blend of cynicism and naivet\u00e9 with which, until recently, it was so gleefully consumed by academics and cultural critics alike\u2026.\u00a0 <\/span>More importantly, perhaps, the terrorists\u2019 acts, together with our government\u2019s responses, both civil and military, re-emphasize our need to question many assumptions made by academics and politicians alike concerning globalization\u2014most pertinently that this process somehow marks the end of history and ideology. Thus, we must attempt to deconstruct the cultural experience of globalization if we wish not only to comprehend the forces that made possible the events of September 11, but also to comprehend more fully our continuing role (as a Western power serving as the primary conduit of national and multinational capital within the global market) in the shaping of such events.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Sixteen years and three presidents later, we are still working to comprehend these forces.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>\u201cNational Review,\u201d a prominent conservative opinion journal, published an article this past September reflecting on how 9-11 ended a brief \u201cgolden age\u201d of American utopian hopefulness.\u00a0 <\/span>The article is implicitly critical of historian Francis Fukayama\u2019s notion of the \u201cend of history\u201d (1992) that I referenced above, which claimed that the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union was not just the end of a historical conflict, but the end of history as such.\u00a0 <\/span>Or, rather, that it represented the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cReview\u201d concludes that our current \u201cparanoid atmosphere\u201d is a sad return to normal\u2014if normal is the state of affairs that existed during the Cold War prior to 1991.<\/p>\n

Writing from a liberal perspective, \u201cSalon\u201d asked the question: \u201cHow do we find a way out of a 100-year war?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>This article takes aim at the Bush administration\u2019s response, and the subsequent War on Terror, concluding that \u201cit failed to look back at the preceding era \u2014 the era since 1947 \u2014 and assess the successes and failures, particularly the tragic failure of Vietnam, which was obviously connected to the national security framework developed under Truman.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Like \u201cNational Review,\u201d \u201cSalon\u201d bemoans our failure to learn from history.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>What is striking is not that, despite their political differences, both opinion pieces conclude that 9-11 was the result of a tragic failure of vision by government and social leaders alike.\u00a0 <\/span>But, even moreso, that when we stop having, and making choices, we stop being free.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>In a way, Jean-Paul Sartre foresaw this when he wrote about existentialism back in 1946, following France\u2019s occupation by Germany and his role with the French Resistance. \u00a0 <\/span>Sartre\u2019s point was that men and women define their own \u201cessence\u201d\u2014that there is nothing that dictates our character, our goals, our beliefs except ourselves.\u00a0 <\/span>Hence his famous line: \u201cman is condemned to be free.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>But the rub is that with this freedom comes responsibility (I know\u2014this sounds a bit like the advice of Peter Parker\u2019s Uncle Ben).\u00a0 <\/span>And this just isn\u2019t a simple, everyday sort of responsibility, such as doing your chores or getting to work on time or completing your homework.\u00a0 <\/span>Rather, it is a responsibility to all humanity\u2014because there is simply no one else but ourselves to be responsible.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>Sartre always maintained that existentialism was a humanism\u2014a philosophical and ethical system that maintains the value and agency of human beings.\u00a0 <\/span>As a result, Sartre believed that his philosophy was ultimately a hopeful one\u2014because he believed in the ability of human beings to make different choices and not simply repeat previous mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>That starts with our own ability to listen and speak to one another with respect and civility.\u00a0 <\/span>For this reason, UMPI has both an obligation to provide such an environment to all of its students and extended community members as well as educational experiences that encourage all of us to engage in civil and productive discourse.\u00a0 <\/span>As I\u2019ve noted before, maintaining civil discourse means ensuring that all can:<\/p>\n

undertake a serious exchange of views;<\/p>\n

focus on the issues rather than on the individual(s) espousing them;<\/p>\n

defend their interpretations using verified information;<\/p>\n

thoughtfully listen to what others say;<\/p>\n

seek the sources of disagreements and points of common purpose;<\/p>\n

embody open-mindedness and a willingness to change their minds;<\/p>\n

assume they will need to compromise and are willing to do so;<\/p>\n

treat the ideas of others with respect;<\/p>\n

avoid violence (physical, emotional and verbal).<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>\u201cOwl Stand By You\u201d is our promise to work constantly toward making this environment a reality on our campus so that, together, we can learn about the past and make new plans for the future, regardless of our political inclinations or beliefs.\u00a0 <\/span>Ultimately, that is the only way that we will make this a better world for us all, locally as well as globally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Sixteen years ago this past Sept. 11, I recall leaving my 9:25 a.m. College Composition classroom in Pullen Hall on a clear blue morning and, as I made my way up to the Campus Center, hearing the first reports of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.\u00a0 The weeks following were filled with fear, sorrow, anger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8787,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions\/8787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}