Final Blog Post

“What we carry. This is the story in the end.” –Florence, Falling Man

Keith didn’t ask to be born. Neither did Nick. They happened to be the product of various biological combinations, appearing on the earth with little hands and toes. Life happens, and we are in it. We wake up. We sleep. We walk. We keep moving forward. As we grow, we make sense of awkward limbs, cracking ankles, upset stomachs, fading memories, bodies and bodies. We wrestle with urges, desires, needs, both false and real. Our eyes, ears, fingers, tongue, nose take in the world, others too. Why are we here? Presented with an unanswerable question, arguably, we search for meaning. We search for God. We reject God. We wonder, We struggle. Who is in control of all of this? Am I a spiritual person? We make decisions, large and small, every day. Things happen we can’t control. Tragedies blindside us. We experience loss. To be sure, we all experience loss. Events and circumstances arrest us, consume us without our permission. They happen to us, and we make sense of them. We are resilient creatures. This is it, the beauty in everdayness.

As we grow, we build ourselves. Little pieces, conversations, experiences, we build slowly. First words, first loves. Travel, reading, learning. And 9/11 Happened. A loved one dies. We are badly injured. We are emotionally injured. Tragedy breaks even the strongest structures of self. Left in shambles, sifting through pieces, we attempt to rebuild. We rebuild ourselves, individually and collectively. Project rebirth documented this rebuilding. Disparate lives examined parallel to the rebuilding of the WTC site, each person finding something to get them through. Falling Man documented the rebuilding of individuals within a family and the pain of picking up pieces. It is important to remember this when examining political events and theorizing on the grand scale.

For me, it is sometimes easy to get lost in theory. I remember when we were discussing Polanyi, we focused on the double movement and resulting sociopolitical changes happening in the world. We almost lost Polanyi’s young chimney sweep, getting caught inside the chimney and perishing. It was necessary to connect with the pains of migration to cities, split families and the jarring contrast of city and country life that spurred the countermovement’s reaction. Mills’ power elite was more than a description of the modern-day ruling classes. It conveyed finger-on-trigger apprehension, the horror of bomb drills and cowering underneath desks. For me, this is the first lesson of Project Rebirth and Falling Man. When events are highly politicized and theorized, we often lose touch with the everyday experiences that give them meaning.

Both works also got me thinking about myth. After reading Barthes’ text, it is easy to identify mythologies everywhere. Both Veblen and Latour seemed to be writing in the same vein. In my earlier post on Barthes, I mentioned 9/11 and its relationship to the wrestler myth. I was timid, suggesting that I might be taking the example too far. Looking back, our reaction as a country after 9/11 is the embodiment of so many of the negative aspects of the theorists we’ve read. As a country, we avoided engaging with complexity, and took the ‘experts’ at their word [Latour]. We believed that the Bush administration knew better than us; they went up into Truthland and came back to share with us things we could never know on our own. We did not engage with the reality of war; the reality of the death and destruction that would be caused by our decisions [Falling Man/Project Rebirth]. The issue of caskets being filmed coming back to the U.S. is a great example of this. Rather than engaging in open communication and deliberation [Dewey], the “facts” ended discussion; there was a clear right and wrong [Latour]. We misunderstood the nature of the Power Elite and the networks and connections that allowed Dick Cheney to profit immensely from war [Mills]. And most prominently, we chose not to engage in the act of critical thinking. We accepted the President’s request to “go shop” instead of thinking deeply about our situation. In many ways, most of us embodied Marcuse’s One Dimensional Man, becoming lost in the ever-growing number of false needs and the desire for conspicuous consumption [Veblen].

If we can free ourselves from the self-imposed shackles of the cave, we can open our minds up to think critically about the world around us. Questioning power structures and leadership is essential to ensuring that a post 9/11 situation will not reoccur. Really, this is what education should be about. Freeing us to explore our own questions, to be our own experts about the world around us.

If I had to put my finger on the driving force of the movement to war, it would be the eye for an eye myth that Barthes describes through wrestling coupled with Appadurai’s description of an US vs. THEM mentality. If we were able to get some distance on the issues, cool the heat of revenge and engage in some form of forgiveness, a horrible situation may have become an opportunity for real change -- and that’s where my heart breaks. As a country, the U.S. missed out on an opportunity to better the community, both in this country and abroad.