Lessons from 9/11
On more than one occasion I've promised myself that I wasn't going to post about articles in Madison's Capital Times anymore. Every time I say that, they someone suck me back in. Here's the day today. The Cap Times landed an interview with Jazz legend Sonny Rollins, who is performing at the Overture Center this Saturday. Rollins lived six blocks away from the World Trade Center and witnessed the terrible events that day. Here's the exchange that caught my eye:
When you talk to people do you feel that ordinary Americans have learned what they need to from 9/11?I feel that technology has created so many consumer goods and distractions from just being able to sit down in a quiet place and think about who you are and what life is. It's taken people away from being able to contemplate. Maybe contemplation might do it. It does for me. It's just harder today to get to a place where you can even feel, well, let's try to change the political system. People aren't as interested in that anymore.
Huh? The lesson we needed to learn from 9/11 wasn't that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Or that we can't turn a blind eye to the forces of evil in the world. Nope. The lesson we should learn is that technology is bad and we should stop and smell the roses. While that's a perfectly legitimate view, what in the world does it have to do with 9/11?
Maybe one of the things we should have learned from 9/11 is to stop asking actors and musicians what they think about world events.
Posted by at October 12, 2005 03:31 PM
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| # October 12th, 2005 10:47 PM Daddy |
| I don't think we needed 9/11 to drive home that point, but it's well taken.
Who are musicians? High-school dropouts, rebels, drunks, addicts....likely never passed a high school civics class, likely don't remember it, definitely no longer have the emotional stability needed to see both sides of an issue. And who are actors? Spoiled rich kids, privately tutored on the set, never TOOK a high school civics class, get by in life with charm and beauty rather than principle and rationale. And their profession is the antithesis of the public policy world: play rather than work; fantasy instead of reality; heightened conflict rather easing tension; solicitation of empathy instead of calls for justice. |
| # October 13th, 2005 8:43 PM random10 |
| Absolutely correct Kris. The ability to repeat dialog with emotion is not knowledge, its talent. The ability to express emotion by voice or instrument is not knowledge, its talent. Besides, knowledge by itself is not wisdom. |
| # October 14th, 2005 4:37 PM mbrlr |
| "Who are musicians? High-school dropouts..."
Please. Generalizations like that don't do anyone any good and are elitist as can be in an extraordinarily bad way. What I took from his statement is that ut us difficult to focus in this oh-so-technological world nowadays that it's hard to have the time to *think* about all that's occurred. BTW, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but I suspect our feelings about who and what we should be vigilant differ considerably. Ditto on the forces of evil. |