My high school was one of the first church schools of the recent era. I wasn’t doing well in the big, consumerist public school, so off I went to the little school. I did fine in the less formal setting. It was a fundamentalist school—probably what would be called right-wing and patriotic as well. It had quite a few rules, too. Funny that I’d call it less formal. But the public school seemed more like a machine with social rules about everything and little variation supported: it’s a Stepford school. The little church school had a dress code but let the people be like a rainbow. What a buncha kooks.
There were no locks on the lockers. (The school has grown a lot since my day. I have no idea if they still have no locks.) The principle said that if we ever put locks on the lockers that meant we’d failed as a community. But we’d have theft from time to time. Some kid would lose it and there’d be a spell of trouble. Maybe there’d be vandalism, whatever. So we’d have an Assembly and sit there a couple hours, for discussion and working things out. There wasn’t vengeance. The trouble meant that the whole thing was broken and required that we all fix it together. People weren’t treating each other right and we had to get it back together. Life happens, things get out of hand, teasing starts to snowball, someone starts taking the brunt of it or feeling more left out than usual. There’s a weak link. But the trouble is a problem for the whole chain.
So someone would eventually confess or come out with it in some way. They might be a new kid—an immigrant, so to speak—who had never seen such a school, such personal respect, they read the no-locks situation wrongly, maybe they weren’t fitting in yet and had come from a bad situation. But the rest of the kids weren’t let off the hook either. We were obliged to help a kid who was in trouble. And if there was teasing or cliquishness going on, maybe with popular kids lording it over others, or if some kind of self-righteousness was getting out of hand, it was dealt with and put in its place. The problem wasn’t usually solved at the Assembly, but that would jar things loose.
The culprit was always found, that I recall. They were busted, too, but not with humiliation. Maybe they’d be bumped from school for a week and would surely have to do restitution. There’d be meetings at the office for everyone involved. But then everyone would be welcomed back. If everyone could accept the culture and the rules, they could stay. It was up to them. But no way were we going to put locks on lockers to have the needed security to get by despite a broken situation. And I believe the principle put himself on the line as well: if this won’t work it means I failed and I’ll leave as well.
A friend said that this is how his public school principal also handled such situations. I didn’t know they had such latitude. But maybe all they have to do is stand up for it.
On a related note, my dad was an engineering professor and there were a lot of foreign grad students around the house while we were growing up. Arabic and Asian. What they said they noticed the most as we showed them around town was the LACK OF SECURITY at places like grocery stores. They said there’d be guards where they came from. My wife was a babysitter for friends down in Colombia for a year: she said that guards with machine-guns were anywhere there was something of value. Everyone said that unless there was security in their third world countries everything would be stolen in a blink. It was just amazing that America needed no security. What did we have that those other countries didn’t have?
Shortly after 9-11 when the word came down that security everywhere would be increased, especially in airports. That it meant becoming our enemy. It was playing into their hands. What does a terrorist think that a human will do when attacked? That they will defend themselves. The terrorists found the loophole in civilization. Because of the differences between nations and people, if only in their stages of development, an act of terrorism forces its victim to do two amazing things: to give up their freedom, and to terrorize themselves. It’s a double victory.
And it doesn’t require one side to be barbaric or evil. It only requires difference of some kind that contacts another group and one person decides to attack, to activate the essential incompatibility between people and to force the hand of the other in a way in which they conquer themselves for you. Crazy, eh? But it works.
Another crazy angle is that this attack can easily happen from WITHIN the host system and be done while obeying its rules! It’s called the weak link. No system is perfect. If pressed, it will topple on its own.
Nothing can stop an ill will, it seems. –Except force. And that breeds more ill will.
Security is what you do when you fail. War is what happens when everyone has screwed up. War is not about fixing anything, it’s about killing and blowing things up. It’s a patch at best, a stopgap if you’re lucky. The burden is still on the people behind the fighters to solve their essential problem. But how can all the weak links be fixed? No can do.
I’m reading a book right now about ocean governance. It’s a world of growing chaos today. And not because of law-breakers. There are tons of regulations and those who are destroying maritime trade are doing it WITHIN the law! Nearly all of the world’s international trade—the trade between DIFFERENT nations—happens on the sea. It’s totally amok at this point. And it also is full of terrorism and risk of huge attacks. And the terrorists know that the real damage will come in reaction and response to what they do. The damage will be in what we are forced to do to ourselves. That’s where they really win.
They’ve already nearly destroyed and severely hamstrung avionics. Not because of the loss of three airliners and 2500 people. No, by destroying the industry due to reaction to their attack. Yet air travel is nearly back to old levels. Their New World won’t look much different from the old. But it will be essentially different. It’ll be THEIR world. The old airlines are nearly all bankrupt and the news says they’ll soon be gone. Airports are like prisons now. That was the goal: to change business and to expand the prison model.
The prison will expand on the sea as well. Except the sea is tough to control. It’s a real doozy. If we think land is hard… Out of sight in a storm is truly no man’s land. And that’s where someone who isn’t really a human can go and attack from.
The only real security comes in a prison.
Some terrorists want a secure world. They thrive in it. They’ll get the keys. One group or another of them will end up with the keys. Maybe the best key is just a place to hide. In a storm, in a number, in plain sight. Then infect.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights of America don’t guarantee bodily security. They guarantee ideas. No, they encourage us to fight to keep the paper the ideas are printed on alive and in action. No paper can guarantee anything. Those papers only let us risk our lives to defend not our bodies but those ideas. But those ideas aren’t perfect. They have loopholes that viruses can infect. And those ideas aren’t only about defense, but are also encouragement to stand up and just do what you do.
I thought that after 9-11 that what would’ve nipped those terrorists in the bud would’ve been to remove restrictions. To ignore the attacks and indeed make ourselves easier to attack next time. To make airports friendlier places, not less so. It would be tough medicine, but maybe the outrageousness that was needed.
Maybe it all comes down to what the moms of terrorists think about them. How do you get the moms to turn against them? By becoming more open and friendly? Or by closing up and being more bitter?
We should go about our business even more than before. OUR business, not business’s business: not corporation’s or government’s business: they love a prison. Who hates a prison? AN INMATE! A PERSON! SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T WORK THERE! What does Al Qaeda love? Strictness. Control. What does a prison guard want? A RAISE! He’d fight you if you tried to take away his meal ticket. But, darn, those prisons gotta go! Cut ’em WAY back.
Sure, kill anyone who raises a hand against you. But welcome anyone who doesn’t. That approach probably contains its own downfall as well, but one would go out as a person at least instead of as an inmate. Would you rather be in a burning village or a burning prison? As the samurai say, we’re all going to die soon the only question is how.
