The Greater Significance of 9/11

[julianalexander745]

Jordan Peterson articulates things expertly as usual.

What stood out for me was this:

"the $1 Trillion surplus projected [from 2001-2011 was negated to a $4 Trillion deficit"

Kinda blows me away that we were en route to experience the greatest wealth and prosperity the world had ever seen by far - only to get stuck with the Iraq War and the financial crisis.

 

[Laika]

Jordan Peterson articulates things expertly as usual.

What stood out for me was this:

"the $1 Trillion surplus projected [from 2001-2011 was negated to a $4 Trillion deficit"

Kinda blows me away that we were en route to experience the greatest wealth and prosperity the world had ever seen by far - only to get stuck with the Iraq War and the financial crisis.

In the same way that some historians argued the start of the World War I in 1914 marked the end of the "long 19th century", it could be argued that the September 11th Attacks marked the end of the 20th century as an era. After the two world wars, the rise and fall of both fascism and communism, America had ten years from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, where it was the world's greatest and only superpower. The 21st century as we know it, began after 9/11 with the authoritarianism and militarism of the Bush administration. Both Obama and Trump have largely continued and extended the policies started then. The fact that a random group of people could hijack air-planes and crash them in to major landmarks was certainly a symbolic end of American triumphalism and "greatness", but it opened the door to distinctly illiberal forces to walk in the corridors of power in the United States.

It's rather alarming to think that young people nowadays have never known a time without the threat of terrorism (Islamic, far right or otherwise) and an authoritarian state trying to pretend it can control these forces. The generation born after 2001 is only now coming of age and the assumptions of that world in conflict have been exaggerated and aggravated in to our current state of polarisation.

It may have happened like that anyway even without 9/11 as the same social and economic forces were at work in the United States and around the world leading to that conflict, but they were essentially "invisible" before than. Even with the irregularities in the 2000 U.S. election, I don't think any of us could have imagined where we could have been 18 years after 9/11 if it hadn't had shaken the confidence of the United States in its own capacity for shaping world events to suit its interests. That loss of control has been an ever present and corrosive feature ever since.

 

[PoetPhilosopher]

9/11 was quite a scare. I was too shy to reach out to my parents about how it bothered me as a kid, so I told an online friend, who was sympathetic.

 

[leov]

Jordan Peterson articulates things expertly as usual.

What stood out for me was this:

"the $1 Trillion surplus projected [from 2001-2011 was negated to a $4 Trillion deficit"

Kinda blows me away that we were en route to experience the greatest wealth and prosperity the world had ever seen by far - only to get stuck with the Iraq War and the financial crisis.

Petrodollar warfare - Wikipedia

 

[julianalexander745]

Petrodollar warfare - Wikipedia

So did 9/11 essentially make Iraq 2 inevitable?

 

[leov]

So did 9/11 essentially make Iraq 2 inevitable?

That was a part of the plan, for 21 Century, America’s coming out as leading exporter of fossil fuels.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It's a bit ironic that generations after WWII (during the period from the late 50s to late 80s) had a much more serious threat hanging over them - possible nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union, with the Cuban Missile Crisis bringing this into sharp focus - but there was not the general fear from terrorism that could have caused so much mistrust and anatagonism towards so many other nations. Singular events such as 9/11, even though many lives were lost, can hardly be compared with the devastation that a nuclear war would likely have involved, yet we seemed to have managed then.

 

[LuisDantas]

Jordan Peterson is such a frustrating person to listen to.

He is so close to making a significant breakthrough and eventually writing a dynamite book about the nature and consequences of deep seated delusion, assuming that he learns at some point to reign his own.

His insight is wild and malformed, but there is a lot of promise there nonetheless.

Anyway, about the significance of 9/11. Jordan Peterson is at his best talking about psychology, but has a bad habit of allowing himself speak to audiences while bleeding into other subject matters that he just doesn't give nearly enough thought to.

We see that here. He skirts along the edge of the significance, but apparently he does not have a lot of experience with matters of History proper. He is in awe for the psychological impact of a specific historical event and doing a very good job of presenting that as the be-all end-all of the consequences, despite being obviously wrong. I believe that he sincerely fails to notice that he is neglecting to talk about the historical significance of the historical event. He is charismatic, one has to give the old devil that much.

So charismatic that we may easily end up forgetting that History deals with a perspective and scope that are not really very similar to those of psychology. That is significant here, because his discourse is very much fixated on a "what if" scenario that, from all indications, is pure fantasy.

9/11 was not a particularly avoidable event, no matter how ardently people attempted to convince themselves otherwise back in the day. It was the eventual consolidation of trends and forces that had been put into place for decades by the very specific needs and demands of people who are far too commited to keeping things predictable for anyone's good. People who knew what others expected from them and played along to the bitter end.

IMO the true greater significance of 9/11 is that it happened to be the immediate trigger event for the collective decision of how people worldwide would balance their fears with their idealism. The overall response was "by giving up and embracing those fears, destructively and irrationally as that might be".