Driven by a desire to understand the events of November 21st, 2012 and the dearth of primary sources, I have turned, like many others, to the numerous popular and scholarly accounts of “The Fall.” Readers, a word of caution: be wary of accepting anyone’s word as the unequivocal truth. Even scholars are prone to mistakes, if not outright misrepresentation. Just a few months ago, several well-received books, replete with so-called “new” information, were dismissed as partial or complete fabrications.
I recently purchased Evan Schulberg’s (Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania) new book on the immediate aftermath of the event. As of now, I have only skimmed the book, but some of his observations are fairly interesting.
For example, Dr. Schulberg writes:
One of the difficulties of understanding the slightly unoriginally named “The Fall” is the lack of a physical site. The event and its aftermath had no delineated boundaries. Even though much of the current scholarship asserts that New York City was the point of origin, no “Ground Zero,” as such, has ever been confidently identified.
…
Consider the importance of the original Ground Zero in the mythos of America. Following the physical and spiritual devastation of 9/11, the geographic location of the terrorist attack took on a mythic power…. It was used to justify not only two wars but also countless infractions on our civil liberties.
What effects did the lack of a similar site following “The Fall” have on the American psyche? What happens when a catastrophe is no longer localized? What happens when the apocalypse is, to a certain extent, everywhere?”
Thoughts?
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