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September 16, 2001 September 11It is the Sunday after the vile attack and we mourn. We began mourning when the first stupefying shock subsided and our mourning will persist. For how long? We do not know. This is not the simple grief of a loss that can be assumed after due process. It is a complex grieving for the needless deaths, for the pain of families and their loved ones; it is the desolate sadness of contemplation of evil deeds perpetrated by our brother humans. Above all, it is the grief of helpless, hopeless knowledge that our children will assume and make part of their very being the horror, the rage, the pain that tears apart their elders. Our grieving is underscored by deep fear of the inevitable repercussions that will follow the assault. Whether in the name of vengeance or of universal justice, retaliation will compound the horror. With the distorted heroism of fallen angels a few young men caused unspeakable harm to the fragile tissue of our so tentatively emerging humanity. Themselves victims of vicious cycles rooted in blind and ancient hatred, they felt justified in killing untold numbers of people uninvolved in the sombre machinations of those who fanatically pursue obsolete patterns of existence. In their wake they left incalculable damage in the form of boundless anger. It is this anger that endangers the process of our enlightenment. Anger is blinding, subjectively and collectively. Nothing is more savage than collective anger for it finds easy fuel in the subjective rage of the individual. And so the vicious cycles are perpetuated, year after year, generation after generation, century after century. Children are the recipients of our virtues and vices, our good and our evil, our sense and our nonsense. With existential loyalty, very young children will assimilate all that is most deeply rooted in us, making it their own. In The Absorbent Mind Maria Montessori says
When one considers the vast number of children born into environments where fear, blame and guilt prevail, or into an ambience corrupted by prejudice and fanaticism, or in a régime based on tyranny and injustice, the above quote becomes chillingly frightening. Yet millions of children are born into such environments. Millions of children find themselves in situations of unimaginable horror. Many thousands of children will suffer the consequences of September 11, either because of personal loss, or because they are the offspring of those supposedly to blame for the outrage, hence stigmatised by the actual or assumed wrongdoings of their people. When we blame, we do so indiscriminately, including with perverted magnanimity the entire population of nations where the malignant growth that is terrorism thrives. To our shame, we know that it is capable of darkly growing in any country on our earth. To our greater shame, we know that in the long run it is the children who will bear the consequences of blind fanaticism. All these children are our responsibility. All these children require the wisdom of adults - parents, family, friends, educators - who have reassessed their own spirituality, their own moral values. Then only will they be adequate to mend, with gentle firmness, the ravages caused. Then only will they be capable of providing environments where every child’s spirit may flourish, of preparing a spiritual milieu that will animate the children’s humanity, allowing them to look at life with joy and with trust. It is in our hands to ensure that as the children become adults, their moral sanity will make of mankind a decent species. Perhaps, one day, the need for universal mourning may abate and be replaced by steadfast hope for the future of humanity. Renilde Montessori |