I recently wrote something off-hand about 9/11 being “meaningless”, which I took a certain amount of flak over. Been thinking about it ever since and I wanted to update on that line of thinking.

Maybe the simplest meaning to be derived out of 9/11 is simply “Human Atrocity”: not only that it exists, but that it is a central component of our society. But I’m still not sure I’m willing to draw any particular conclusion about the event’s meaning beyond that. Who did it and why? Somebody and for some particular set of reasons which they felt sufficiently certain of to use as motivations for their actions.

What’s the meaning of an event, anyway? The reasons it occurred, the consequences which followed it or something else? I still don’t have the answers to those questions. But I know that there’s no inherent meaning in “Human Atrocity”, which by that I mean that violence has no inherent value; violent acts do not lead to meaning. They’re just violent.

Maybe we could look at 9/11 almost from the perspective of a natural disaster: that is, the nature of humans (or organisms in general) coming together in enclosed spaces often turns to violence over competition for resources and status. Imagining that this event is somehow unique in history is kind of preposterous. More of the same bullshit humans have been doing to one another since time immemorial. I’m not trying to say that people aren’t responsible for their actions, though. If anything, how commonplace violent and atrocious acts are should be a wake up call for people to try and live better. Whatever 9/11 means or doesn’t mean, I think that’s the only thing I’m able to derive any meaning from nowadays really: how do you live your life?