just read all the letters i got from you all, a lot of you express your inabilities to know how you feel about whats going on which is pretty much how i am as well one kid called me out about saying i didnt think any good could come out of this, writing that they thought all the pulling together of people was a positive thing… of course i think that too and what i meant was more that the people responsible for this are misguided to think it would solve anything for them… yeah its great to see everybody being more human towards each other just a shame what it took to get that result… like christmas or burning man for that matter sad that people can only be nice to each other one day, one week a year, this is an old story most of you guys werent around in the sixties, the failure of the ideals of that period is still with me… in a way its hard to describe, all the young people now are used to factions and divisions between them, what if everyone was on the same page so to speak, everywhere one went there was a positive feeling that things were really going to change, that society was going to transform itself totally, in a way the connection between people was very similar to whats going on now in the face of the attack, only the motivation wasnt fear and nationalism, on the contrary there was a great desire to get rid of borders and differences between individuals… i really thought that people would fall into tribal ways of living and stop feeding the mechanised warlike aspects of life… i was a teenager and in retrospect was as naive as many others, as we all know now not much changed and sadder still much of the change that did happen was only temporary what happened? is it just that everyone stopped trying and decided they’d rather have the comforts of middle class life, what happened to the half million people who were at woodstock how many followed dreams and how many are lawyers and used car salesmen? theres no more “counter culture” its all been absorbed, we see the car commercial with born to be wild playing in the background how wild is it to have to deal with a job you cant stand so you can keep up your car payments on some dull looking vehicle? what contradiction… people used to always be talking about a topic that doesnt exist now: conformity being “a conformist” was bad now weve got the gap, uniforms for everyone, certainly the hippies used to wear their uniforms but theyd make them themselves the romans absorbed all that resisted them, i think this is sort of what happened here everything that once had an edge has become a part of the great machine theres the complete blurring of the lines that divide entertainment and news in the media, weve all been seeing things like the trade center bombing in films for the last twenty years, “reality” tv isnt reality its tv and it always pisses me off when some so called news show has a background of sentimental music to play with peoples emotions this all may sound “negative” and i dont mean it to be even though it sounds that way to me too in the light of last tuesdays events perhaps discussions like this become all the more irrelevant, its easy for me to become all the more filled with feelings of frustration but theres still this, no matter what, everyone still has a chance to control their own personal history, that great line from gladiator: what we do today echoes in eternity… i really think that this is a pivotal point… these events may have been formed billions of years ago in cosmic gasses but still we all have our free wills its time for all of us to be stronger than ever things and the way weve all lived up till now may change a lot or not at all but still we all have a choice to be afraid or to stand up to our fears and overcome them really weve all got the exact same thing to lose which is just the dust of our bodies while what there is to gain, the freedom in our spirits is a real reward, certainly worth putting up with a little discomfort now and then follow dreams, you dont have to do what you dont want to peace, out chris