Why Are We Shocked and Surprised by the
Results of Our Affluent Addictions?
by Ethen Perkins
The question I continue to ask myself about
the carefully planned and executed suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon is: "What have we done in the world to make someone so dedicated
to attacking our centers of financial and military power?" I still find this
question the most central one, not "Who did this?" or "How will we
retaliate?" If we are unwilling to seek answers to this questions, will we ever
really root out the seeds of violence that we ourselves continue to sow, both individually
and collectively through our political, military and trade policies?
It appears that our collective shock and surprise at the recent violent events in
New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, is proportional to our unwillingness to see
our choices at home as connected to our policies and exercise of power on the other
side of the globe. If increased airport security is the only thing in our society
which we are ready to change, then we can expect shocks and surprises like those
of September 11, 2001 to continue to be part of our future No amount of spending
on intelligence, security, military responses, political or financial retaliations
will really change this. A deeper change in our attitudes and thinking is what is
being called for; a change of heart and of life style.
Do our accumulated aggressive actions all over the world and amongst the racial minorities
of our inner cities really reflect our affluent addictions (translate here our official
euphemism for these addictions: "strategic national/security interests")?
Our addiction to affluence can be seen every day as our cars, homes and consumption
of fuel daily grow bigger and bigger. It is also manifested in the current debate
about opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil extraction, in the energy
crisis of the Western States, in water shortages, in deforestation, in our national
denial about changes needed to reverse global warming and in the ongoing global extinction
of species.
Waging another "War on..."
only reflects our personal and national blindness to the truth that war on anything
cannot resolve the underlying problems, especially not a war against harmed indigenous
peoples whose perspective is almost certainly a fight against heavy-handed outside
power and accumulated injustices.
We might catch all the perpetrators who have hurts us, round them up, and then what?
More concentration camps, prisons and reservations to keep us "safe"? More
"final solutions"? Is this how we will open a new millennium? We might
drop a bomb on "their" civilians, too. Who are we fooling that by doing
so we would solve anything? Enough! We each and together must try something creative,
something different, something that might really work. We must courageously change
what we can, accept what we can't, and pray for the wisdom to know the difference.
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