[Nettime-bold] It has taken a week

["Don Byrd" <dbyrd1@nycap.rr.com>]

	I have been trying to think what I think.  This morning I put a short piece
for anyone interested at this URL

http://www.albany.edu/~djb85/dbWebIndex.htm

     It is about 2000 words. It Begins:

                   SOMETHING BIG HAS HAPPENED:

                 THERE ARE NO COMMERCIALS ON TV

	In the aftermath of the terror, 9-11-01.

	The immediate suffering and destruction occupy ones thoughts.  The need for
feeling is immense, but feeling is not easy.  No one knows what to feel.

	How many video cameras were aimed at the WTC Tuesday morning?  Television
seems to have an almost endless supply of new footage. We see it again and
again from many vantages on television and in our sleep.  It is all,
however, silent. The airliners hit silently.  The fire balls flare silently.
The towers collapse silently. The world has become a worse place for every
one.  For those in and near the towers, this worsening of the world must
have been experienced as incomprehensible sound, but for the rest of us, the
terror and sadness reverberate in silence.

	For those who believe in terror, for whom Terror is a God, terror
simplifies. The simplification is credible proof of the deity's power.
Fundamentalisms of all kinds-religious, scientific, economic, sociological,
ethical-all simplify, and the simplifications are violent and destructive
because the complexity of the world is forced into the City of the Simple by
way of a single, narrow gate.

	The god Terror has two kinds of followers-the agents of terror and the
terrified.  They belong to the most vicious circle.  The one makes no
distinction between the guilty and the innocent, killing indifferently.  The
others accept the terrorists' simplification and respond.  The greater the
simplification, the greater the reverberation. The reverberations of this
terror may become deafening or have already.  Those of us who were not near
enough to hear the first impacts are deaf.  We do not hear the explosions or
the screams.  How do we get out of this circle? Inside the worship of terror
the reverberating silence can only continue. It is necessary to multiply
perspectives and rise to higher levels of complexity from which many of
perspectives can be comprehended at once.  This is always the task of
knowing, but at certain times, the imperative is doubly compelling.

     Best,
     Don Byrd
     Albany, NY


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