Many kinds of hatred went into creating the horrors that struck the World Trade Center in New York on September 11. There was a hatred of America’s Middle East policies, our dominance of popular culture, our open society with its extraordinary tolerance for non-traditional and individual forms of expression.
But perhaps the greatest hatred, the Great Satan of hatreds among those responsible for this act of mass murder, the core hatred that made America their mortal enemy and the World Trade Center their symbolic target, is a hatred of what they call ‘western commercialism.’ The American economy, and all the national and regional economies linked to it in a growing network of shared material aspirations, is the antithesis of the bombers’ own value system.
These people are unlike aggressors of times past. They don’t want to take wealth from us so they’ll be richer. They want to destroy wealth so we’ll be poorer. And thus liberated (in their way of thinking), freed from all the diverting opportunities and choices that make up the American lifestyle, we might become more spiritually elevated. More like themselves. And even more important, we would be less able to fill the world with the distractions that make them question their own single gauge belief system.
How shall we confront an enemy who has rejected all things modern except New Age killing mechanisms? Our religious leaders will fight the battle by preaching tolerance, and our military people will use their own weapons to ferret out and destroy the bombers and those who shelter them. In a very real sense, though, the major battles in this war will be fought in markets.
Markets are animated by greed and fear. They are often cruel. They can be capricious in the way they reward and punish. Yet, they are also the most human and democratic of national and international institutions, the best way yet discovered to tap the collective wisdom of great numbers of people on a daily and even a minute-by-minute basis. Their successful operation is what ultimately supports diversity, tolerance and culture, as well as the political and military power that allows a government of laws and rights to function.
In coming days, in response to the September 11 bombings and their aftermath, officials and bureaucrats will be doing their thing, working to keep markets stable and orderly. Central bankers will supply liquidity and CEOs will make upbeat predictions about the future. It’s the market decisions of individual consumers and investors, however, that will determine in the end whether this battle, this war, is won or lost.
So after you give blood and send a check to the Red Cross, after the flag-waving and the fist-shaking, after the organized mourning, while the leadership cadre does what’s its paid to do, buy something. Buy a sweater or a hundred shares of stock or a car. Buy for yourself or a friend or a loved one or someone on the front lines by the wreckage of the World Trade Center. Buy to help keep someone’s job or your own job. Buy to support the tax base that maintains public services. Buy to generate profits and bonuses and on-the-job benefits.
In this war of value systems, continuing to live well is the best revenge we can exact from people intent on seeing that we live badly. Through simple acts of working and spending and borrowing and investing, we win, they lose.
Fight back—Buy something!
© Michael Silverstein
