Jenifer’s Shelter Island Journal: Regeneration

My focus for this column was going to be “vaccinations,” because I’m old, and I hear they’re just as important to me, and my elder-buds, now as they were when we were on the salad side of life.. It will be my focus next time, all things being equal. 

But this 25th observance of 9/11 ambushed me in unexpected ways. I wasn’t prepared for the feelings that erupted. Until now, which is odd for a former feeling-stuffer who thinks she pretty effectively processes her emotions. By 9/10 I realized I couldn’t write about anything else.

My usual observance of 9/11 involves writing in my journal and tuning in to the yearly naming of all the Twin Tower victims by their family members. I’ll go about morning chores, stopping to listen for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, and stopping, too, for the moments of silence, and crying off and on. But this year, I realized that a whole generation of us have been born and grown up into young adulthood in a strictly post-9/11 world that I, a first-wave Baby Boomer, have traveled from the outer edges of middle age into old age, and seen the United States of America transform from the “greatest democracy in the world,” to a nation that’s lost track of what kind of country it’s supposed to be — all in the wake of 9/11. It’s like we’ve been experiencing a form of collective PTSD.

On the other hand, for the first time in the past 25 years, I’ve been able to bear watching first-person accounts of survival on that impossible day — descriptions of horror and heroism and the best of humanity, of community, of co-operation surfacing at the worst of times. It was a moment of unprecedented shared experience, unfolding in real time while millions watched slack-jawed in disbelief, a moment that would inspire a sense of community worldwide. 

It seems to me we had a choice back then: to take stock of where America was in its evolution, here at home and in the world at large and in the wake of such tragedy, to step back and reflect on the reasons for the hatred that had fueled it. That kind of deep reflection and, simultaneously, a search for justice were not mutually exclusive. We needed to do both. And yet, it’s beyond irony that the same moment that could’ve seen the beginning of a possibly lasting peace and understanding, in fact precipitated an era of increasing dishonesty, arrogance, greed, corruption and prejudice with the starting of the misbegotten wars of retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq and culminating — hopefully, culminating — in the near-destruction of our democratic values and institutions that once seemed so inviolate.

But somehow today, 25 years after 9/11, that awful moment when the timer started clicking on our country and our world, I can’t help feeling that finally we’re waking up. The funny thing is, the tyranny of technology which has kept us distracted, even drugged up, deliberately unaware of our dire straits for two and a half decades, is precisely the ear-splitting alarm bell that is blasting our major tech-moguls awake: the existential threat of AI. Listen to Dario Amodei, head of Anthropic, in just the last couple days before 9/11, as he responds to what computer scientists call “recursive self improvement,” which some A.I. developers believe may lead to the software spinning out of their control.

From the New York Times, 9/10/26: “Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” Mr. Amodei said. He also suggested that countries with democratic governance systems coordinate to create safety standards, which could take the form of regulatory action. He added that it would probably require a global effort working with other nations, including authoritarian ones, to properly coordinate a slowdown. Hours after Mr. Amodei published his essay, Mr. Altman posted a statement to social media agreeing that a slowdown of A.I. development was necessary.

Mr. Amodei is just one of many leading voices in technology who have formed a chorus of alarm over this potential disaster. If you’re wondering what I find hopeful in this, is that finally leaders are taking some responsibility, considering unintended consequences, possibly even putting the public good above mega-profits. Each one of us can do the same — take responsibility for being good humans, good protectors of the planet, good citizens. Doing that already. Do it more.

The terrible lessons of 9/11 are worth learning. They will lead us towards the regeneration we so desperately need. It’s clear that we’re no longer “the greatest democracy on earth” (if we ever really were) but maybe we could be, and then 9/11 will not have been in vain.