It Doesn’t Fit

In a Sept. 11 video clip, a fleeing New Yorker pauses near the camera, looks back at total destruction, and says, "What does it mean?" Nobody answers.

"It means get outta here, Lady!" would not work as an answer, because she is already doing that. Why does she stop and look back? Her face shows a combination of horror and disbelief. She has to make sure it is really happening. She asks an epistemological question: "How can this be integrated into my view of reality?" Or, in other words, "How can I fit this into my mind?"

That's why it changes everything: it doesn't fit.

It doesn't fit in the Romper Room World, where really bad things are done far away, by people who don't know any better, and just need understanding.

It doesn't fit with Sacrificial Ethics, which says that other people's values are more important than your values, so the way to defend your virtue is to sacrifice your values.

It doesn't fit with the Golden Rule -- unless you take mass murder as asking to be murdered.

The answer to the video lady is: "What does it mean? It means change your thinking, Lady."

The purpose of thinking is to fit things together into an overall view that keeps you from getting lost. If you try to handle a new fact without fitting it in, you get lost and stay lost. The usual way around this problem is to adjust reality in your mind until it fits. That is, you pretend that the fact is not a fact. But how does one pretend that airplanes were not really flown into skyscrapers on live TV?

There's no way around it. You have to graduate from the ethical Romper Room, stop regarding sacrifice as virtue, and make justice your personal golden rule. Otherwise, you'll be forever muddled by images of crumbling towers that don't fit in. The question will never get answered. It will forever be, "What can it possibly mean?"