“O Lord, give each person his own personal death.
A thing that moves out of the same life he lived,
In which he had love, and intelligence, and trouble.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
This essay is meant as a commemoration on the anniversary of the
tragedy which the world knows simply as “9/11.”
And the word “commemorate” comes from the Latin commemorationem, or “reminding.” Perhaps it is strange of me to suggest that there
is a need for reminding, in connection with an event that has become so
thoroughly ingrained in our collective consciousness and our collective
unconsciousness. But not so strange if
you came upon the news story of a San Antonio mattress store which, in a 9/11
themed television ad, showed two employees falling backwards into twin towers
of mattresses. No tragedy, no matter how
grave and no matter how sacred, is safe against becoming kitsch. And this is only one step away from
forgetting.
Above, I’ve shared Rilke’s prayer for death. Rilke was a profoundly religious man, and saw
death as a passage through which we reach our final audience with God. Why did he mourn the loss of death? Writing with the industrial revolution in
mind, Rilke anticipated a mass-produced extinction taking the place of death.
The social critic Theodor Adorno took up this theme. He wrote, “Only a humanity to whom death has
become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it
administratively on innumerable people.
Rilke's prayer … is a piteous attempt to conceal the fact that nowadays
people merely snuff out.” Adorno wrote
of this in connection with the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and the harnessing
of industrial efficiency to the aim of ending lives.
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| An amateur artist named Willie Gardner created this about 10 years before 9/11/2001. |
The spiritually-inclined among us, those who see value in all human
life, regret that the events of 9/11 ushered in the so-called Global War on
Terror, which, conducted by the United States, has been snuffing out lives for
15 years straight. In many countries
around the globe, this snuffing out occurs without the recipients receiving a
fair trial or a right to appeal.
Government officials have admitted that some of these ended lives
belonged to “civilians” or “bystanders.”
They won’t give the American people honest numbers on how many of the
dead fall into this category.
Those of us who are not so spiritually-minded have little sympathy to spare
for the victims of the Global War on Terror.
News sources remind us every day that American drones stalk their prey
in areas that are overrun by brutally violent psychopathic terrorists.
It might be too difficult for us to push past the pain and rage that
come to mind when we recall the Americans who were killed on 9/11. It might be too difficult to separate the
lurid image of the terrorist from the images of blameless children and wedding
guests whose time on earth is ended by American armaments.
We may simply be unable to experience the weight of responsibility that
comes with the robotized destruction of lives that has occurred over these last
15 years.
We may be forced to concede that these sentiments require more of us than we are able
to give. Even so, it is still our
responsibility to the victims of 9/11 to accept that we are witnesses to an era
that has, through the miracle of technology, advanced beyond death. And as a direct result, we have lost the right to claim that every human life is irreplaceable and invaluable.
