sophiaserpentia | Sep. 10th, 2002

As the moment of 8:46 AM rolls around tomorrow morning, choirs will start to sing Mozart's Requiem. This will happen in almost every time zone, starting at the International Date Line. 180 events around the world have been planned, starting in New Zealand, and ending in American Samoa. This event has been called the Rolling Requiem.

Everybody lost something on or after September 11. Whether that be your life, your freedom, your job, your business, your savings, your nation's sovereignty, your civil rights, your sense of security at home, your sense of living in a free (or somewhat free) society, your sense of complacency... civilization took a big hit.

In the days that followed September 11th last year, a lot of things became clear to me -- foremost among them being the importance of compassion. I would like to be optimistic and think that it is never too late for a compassionate solution to any problem, even still. By that I don't mean that we should go out and hug Osama bin Laden; instead I mean that twenty years ago our exports should have included more food and medicine and less machiavellian meddlings in governmental affairs. Resentment towards the United States is not simple jealousy that we have while they have not.

I am heartened to see that there has been a fair bit of resistance to jingoistic sedation among many of the people I know, who continue to ask why we find ourselves in a "war" with no clear end, exactly the sort of ongoing conflict which Orwell depicted in 1984. In that book, an endless state of war was utilized as the perfect excuse for continual erosion of civil liberties.

The price of liberty, as Thomas Jefferson said, is eternal vigilance.