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KNOWLEDGE continued from page 3
investigation into Elizabethan plays will reveal a caricature of humans as entities controlled more by passion than by reason. With that said, I do not believe one can completely disregard the rational choice theory. With a great deal of humility, it may be used to shed some light on many different subjects. What I would propose is that no student falls under the spell of these theories. They may work well to explain an event retrospectively, but to claim they possess a unique ability to predict the future is simply not true. Due to the vast amount of information we possess today, it is crucial to always rely on that instinct which always seeks out the strange in a world that has been described to us since we were children. Claiming humanity is predictable will lead one down a path that reduces beauty to theory and behavior to numbers. We in the 21st century can become many things, yet it is crucial that we continue to recognize the fundamental unpredictability of what the future holds in store. In doing this, we may be able to correct our world in which the economist has more in common with the meteorologist than the philosopher.
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OPINION
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Friday, September 9, 2011
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northern-iowan.org
FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Reach for higher ground
PETER TOBIA/MCT CAMPUS
JOHN ANDERSON
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Executive Editor
remember where I was when American society turned upside down. I was sitting in my sixth-grade classroom when my teachers wheeled out a television, telling us that we were going to watch the news instead of having our regular classes. It took a while for any of us to realize what exactly was happening as we watched repeating footage of a plane colliding with a smoking skyscraper. At the time, I was too young and immature to recognize the significance of the collapse of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 and the resulting 2,996 deaths. War was something from movies and history books – death was the same. I remember seeing people on television react in tears, murderous outrage and patriotic fervor. I remember seeing more American flags and hearing “I’m Proud to Be An American” every morning in school. I remember the calls for revenge and the wars that followed. And yet it wasn’t until I was older that I realized what any of it had meant. Not only were so many lives taken from us, but the attacks burst our illusion of safety and world dominance. The United States of America, the world’s superpower, which hadn’t seen a significant attack on its shores since Pearl Harbor, had been breached by terrorists. And boy, were we terrified. Suddenly, terrorists had a look, and we were seeing them everywhere. Security measures increased to an extent that many felt hampered our freedom, and numerous incidents of harassment and hate crimes broke out against Muslims and southeast Asians. Fear usurped reason, and our fellow Americans became terrorists hiding bombs underneath turbans. The U.S. government added systematic acts of violence to the individual acts as they invaded Afghanistan and later Iraq, which ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden earlier this year, met with celebration by many Americans. We could debate for decades about the causes behind the attacks, and I’m sure we will, but it is impossible to deny that the United States’ military involvement in the Middle East was a major factor. Violence there resulted in violence in the United States, which again resulted in further violence. This summer I had the great fortune to work at a day camp with underprivileged children, and I was able to speak to one 7-year-old who kept getting into fights. When I asked
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him why he continued to fight so much, he told me that his father told him to always push back when pushed. As a result, he had several other children who wanted to beat him up every time they saw him. I tried to help him understand that fighting will just lead to more fighting, that he needed to stop it if he wanted it to stop, but he didn’t get it. He, like me 10 years ago, was too young to understand. It’s never easy to teach someone that violence leads to violence, especially since a nonviolent approach will often lead to at least temporary pain and oftentimes a reputation as a coward. If you turn the other cheek, it’s gonna get slapped. But peacefully standing up to violence is not cowardice – it requires bravery that overcomes the fear of pain. Reaching out to someone who appears threatening and trying to really get to know them requires a lot more courage than avoiding them for fear that they are a terrorist. I am in no place to judge whether or not the United States responded well to the terrorist attacks – many lives depended on their decisions, and I can hardly imagine the deliberations behind each one. However, I can say that there are only two ways that we can find peace as individuals and as a nation: through mutual trust or through force. Trust is without a doubt the difficult way to find peace and security – it means treating your opponents as human beings who will treat you as such and recognizing each other’s value. If your trust is betrayed, you may open yourself up to attack. But making peace through force will always foster the attitudes that lead to terrorism. Such violence has a tendency to demonize the opponents and results in not only fearful attacks from the one in power but murderous responses by those under attack. When they happened, I was too young to recognize the dangerous wages of fear that led to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps our nation was as well. But now we need to come together and recognize that our attackers were humans like us, humans driven to violent acts. Man is by no means a perfect being, but he is a redeemable one. As we remember and commemorate the horrendous events of that fateful day 10 years ago, we need to honor the lives of all who were lost by seeking to forgive those responsible and to begin working together to live in peace. It’s not an easy thing to do, and it’s not without great risk, but it may be the only way to prevent such attacks from ever happening again.
When they happened, I was too young to recognize the dangerous wages of fear that led to the terrorist attacks on Sept.11, 2001. Perhaps our nation was as well.
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