Dartblog

About twelve days after 9/11, I cadged a ride down to Lower Manhattan with a police chief friend and the head of security from an investment bank. The still-smoking site took one aback with the evidence of the millions of pounds of pressure that had been applied as the structures fell. I looked in vain for anything familiar in the wreckage: desks; computer monitors; or even, due to their strength, porcelain toilets. Nothing recognizable had survived the fall.

Additionally, I asked my hosts for the inside story of the evacuation. Had people really been as calm, courageous and considerate as the press had depicted? After all, these were hard-charging competitive capitalists, aggressive businessmen, even Masters of the Universe. My guides confirmed that, in fact, people had quite invariably not panicked; they had assisted each other without regard to rank or strength.

As they say in the UK, that was a pretty good show. We could go so far as to call it a test of civilization: under life or death pressure, people, who otherwise competed against each other, exhibited a social solidarity wherein they treated one another with the same solicitousness as they showed for themselves.

The world offers us many examples of individual heroism; however, mass heroism, the presence of mind and the depth of culture that puts community ahead of self, is harder to find. I do not quite believe, though I can’t prove the point, that people in all other nations would have demonstrated the same self-possession in similar circumstances.

Addendum: Today is Patriot Day, a day of mourning and a celebration of heroism — though not a federal holiday. According to Wikipedia, “the President requests that the American flag be flown at half-staff at individual American homes, at the White House, and on all U.S. government buildings and establishments, home and abroad. The President also asks Americans to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 A.M. (Eastern Daylight Time), the time the first plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.”