Bob Schwartz

MSNBC is running the NBC News broadcast of the events of September 11, 2001 in real clock-time. That is, when it was 9:59am on that date, it is 9:59am today.

Today we have an eleven-year knowledge advantage. Where there was ignorance and speculation about exactly what was going on, we know much more for certain.

We are so stunned still that we are struck silent, but not quite silent. We want to make sense of our tragedies public and private. We don’t just want explanations. We want lessons.

We have more than enough smart talking heads to make articulate, insightful statements. Not to mention those other smart people who have devised strategies to respond, some more popular and effective than others.

And then again there is silence. For a few hours on that day, professional journalists combined with first responders and horrified citizens to say everything that could be said in the moment, maybe all that needs to be said today.

It’s okay to stand dumb. Just for a day.

For those who wonder whether meanness is a sin or vice, you can start with Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas, where Question 135 addresses the issue. Or you could ask your parents or your elementary school teachers or your spouse or your children: It’s not nice to be mean.

Which should make us think about why rampant meanness is not only acceptable, but encouraged, entertaining, and profitable. Cheaters may never prosper (though they often do), but meaners are doing very well these days.

Saying that all things virtuous seem to be dying and on life support is an overstatement that doesn’t get us far. Instead, four possible explanations of how what was once a private disturbance has become such a pandemic, a public poison:

Meanness by proxy: All art and performance is based on the ability and willingness of creators to express what we can’t or won’t. It would be nice to think that we only long to be the one who can move people to tears or laughter, inspire people to reach higher, and if we can’t be those creators, at least they are doing that for us. The same thing unfortunately applies to darker messaging, though. We may not be able to attack quite so sharply and eloquently, but we appreciate that someone can. “Yeah, what he said!”

Meanness as superiority: This is a subset of meanness by proxy. There’s perversity in enjoying the meanness of others, but at the same time taking pride in being one who would never say something like that because…we are better than that and would never be so mean. (Whatever the theological status of meanness, by the way, pride is definitely on all the lists of sins.)

Meanness as incompetent and faulty criticism: This is the explanation of meanness as sub-juvenile behavior. When little children aren’t sure why they hate somebody or something, or can’t articulate it, they revert to name-calling and indiscriminate meanness: “You’re a poo-poo head!” It’s a fantastic dream that one day, thanks to some spell, the most gratuitously mean would be magically forced to speak only such childish epithets.

Meanness unconditioned by a thought/speech barrier: The thought/speech barrier, the wall that should keep many thoughts from ever being spoken, is dissolving. Whether phenomena such as Twitter are causal, enabling, or merely symptomatic is beside the point. Thought moves from brain to mouth (or keyboard) at the speed of synapse. Mean heart becomes mean words in a literal instant.

There is a genuine critical function, which can be exercised with thoughtfulness, care, and respect. That simple sentence, a foundation of a free, enlightened society, is looking particularly quaint, and seems for many to have lost its meaning.

At any moment in America, some portion of the population believes in and is engaged in otherism towards those not like themselves or whom they do not like. The proportion varies, the degree varies, the targeted others vary. It may be race, ethnicity, religion, geography, age, gender, sexual preference, class, wealth, anything. It has been that way, here and everywhere, and it will be that way.

What we can do, the best we can do, is try to shrink the proportion of the population acting on these tendencies, reduce the degree, lower the number of targets. At least we can change the mechanics built into the system, and allow others to do what anyone does, and to be free to be who anyone is. As for the hearts and minds of otherists, that is a farther reach, but ongoing awareness and open discussion is a start.

This is in the context of, a prelude to, a very brief comment on the Trayvon Martin case. There are only two certainties there: Trayvon Martin was shot dead by George Zimmerman and it is in some ways about race. Racism is the primary—though not sole—form of otherism in America. It is our curse, our karma, the legacy of a misguided enterprise that fed right into a tendency toward otherism. Progress is not so much a matter of two steps forward, one step back on a road. It is more like a chaotic, entropic society that wants to be better, if not good, but finds itself spinning around a dark past that throws orbits off kilter by its powerful gravity.

We constantly need to know where we are so we can make corrections, however slight. There was the election of a black President, and now there is this case. Let’s see how we do.