Editorial

Lesson from Disasters: Keep Up

The tragedy that struck United States four years ago is still fresh in many ways. The graphic image of the twin towers collapsing is unlikely to fade away from the memories of the generation that witnessed it. Something else is also unlikely to fade away: The world that has overhauled since then. But was it that fatal day that really changed the world?

[(Above) Ground Zero: The site of the twin towers after four years.

Pics by Randa Haddad]

Like it or not, things had changed long before 9/11. With rapid globalization, the rules of commerce had become different from what was known to us before the advent of WTO. So had the daily life-style of the many people world over. The modus operandi was changing everywhere, not less so in the governments. But had the governments really overcome their cold-war era mentality?

In retrospect, it appears that that some relic of that era was still haunting them. It’s a tragedy that it took 9/11 to shake-off their cold-war era hangover.

Needless to say that development and modernization are also the harbinger of more complication. The tragedy of 9/11 was a direct consequence of the response-gap the rapid human development created. The gap between the benefits of globalization and the obligations it entailed. We were willing to reap the fruits of this human progress but were unwilling to pay the price that the fruit would eventually cost us. The price was that we were required to update our world-view and our response in a timely fashion at par with the pace of development. There we failed to keep-up.

Though belatedly, it has now dawned on us that everything has to move and change in conformity with the rate of development. An imbalance anywhere will result in 9/11, or Katrina for that matter. Big Lesson to drive home there: Keep-up.