Responses to Terrorist Attacks

I put up this section of the site in the immediate aftermath of of 9/11. Several years on, many of the views expressed in these emails have turned out to be quite prophetic.

Like many of you, I received numerous emails after the terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center. Most have advocated one or other perspective or course of action. Lest they be lost in the mists of time, I have included here some of the views and insights that resonated with me, or which I felt were important. They each in their own way promote a shift in our frame of perception, and this lies at the heart of a change in consciousness.

Some of my thinking immediately prior to the attack is in Manifesto for the Future - Part One.

Axis of Shame - Are we all members of an "axis of shameful denial"?
Tired of September 11th - A Canadian Perspective
Thoughts in the Presence of Fear - Wendell Berry
Terror, Love, and the State of the World - John Robbins
Looking back (3 months later) at the day that changed the world - Richard Neville, Australia
Questions in Seeking UnCommon Ground - 1400 challenging questions from Anthony Judge
A Dangerous Appetite for Oil - Rob Nixon, NY Times, October 29, 2001
Some hard questions - posed by Ken Homer a month after Sept 11
All Wars Begin and End in Peace - Terry Mollner
Be Brave Americans! - An intersting perspective from Japan
The Wise Response to Violence - Club of Budapest Declaration by Ervin Laszlo, Michail Gorbachev and others.
Letter from Jean Houston - with deep insight and wisdom
The Deeper Wound. A Letter from Deepak Chopra
The Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself - Richard Thieme. I received this within a few hours of the attack.
A plea for compassionate conversation Vicki Robbins - another very early response.
Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, James Redfield and others - an early response.
Prayers for Peace from ten of the world's spiritual traditions
Bush's Faustian deal with the Taliban. From LA Times, May 22, 2001
A Perspective on Terrorism. Elisabet Sahtouris
A World Out of Touch With Itself. Rabbi Michael Lerner
Our War with the "Other" - Sharif Abdullah
We abhor terrorism - unless we're the ones doing the terrorizing, Michael Moore
Martin Luther King on Non-Violence
America the Beautiful - New rendition by Kaaren Ray

On 9/11,1906, Mahatma Gandhi launched his campaign of nonviolent struggle in Johannesburg, with the words:

"An eye for an eye will only make the world blind"