There is, in every one of us, a part of our minds that knows that what believe about ourselves and about our world is fiction. Which is not to say that every human being is completely psychotic and cut off from reality; it's certainly possible for fiction to match the truth pretty closely in most respects. But there are those occasional bits a pieces that don't quite fit.

Many of us believed in our own personal safety, and the absolute protection of our nation's boarders, until that illusion was pierced by the events of September 11th, 2001. It turns out that we were wrong about that. And we might not have come as far as we think, as far as rising above our base nature.

Our perceptions of safety, our place in the world have been brutally altered, and we are forced to look at these things in a different light. For a lot people the world became a darker, more frightening, more hopeless place. The attacks served to illustrate, in the most horrifying fashion, the cruelty of the world in which we live, and gives lie to the illusion that we meet this world strictly on our own terms. We have adapted to survive as best as we can on this Earth, but it is not enough to protect us from the willful destruction brought about by other, free- acting human beings.

A lot has been said about evil, and the nature of evil, over the past year. What I've learned is that evil is a distinctly human thing. Only people, and the actions of people can be evil: A lion killing an antelope is not evil. Running a plane into a building is. The reason that the word evil exists is because we need a term to apply to the horrific actions of human beings -- those unique creatures who have the ability to reason, to change their minds, to communicate, to feel empathy towards others, and yet somehow do not. To struggle against one's better nature in order to commit atrocities, whether on a personal level, or on a grand scale it the very heart of what it means to be evil.

The term has a lot of baggage, though. Identifying things (or people) as evil carries with it an implicit instruction. Evil must fought against and eradicated. Things classified as evil have no redeeming qualities, no saving graces; nothing good, or even neutral, can ever come of evil and therefore it must be utterly and mercilessly destroyed, lest it brings about your own destruction.

Most of us appreciate cultural relativism enough to realize that it's not right to kill people over small differences (like favorite foods, or national languages, or styles of dress); we recognize that others do not see themselves as evil or barbaric. We can live with the scorn of other cultures that see us as fat and lazy. It's simply not worth killing over.

It's fundamentalism that serves as a gateway to xenophobia. Xenophobia is one thing that leads to hatred and violence. And there are many others. But in this case, we found ourselves attacked by people who simply believed that our very existence is an abomination, the destruction of which justified their actions. Once a belief goes that far, way beyond a mere dislike or disrespect against a culture... what can we do? How do you reason with hate? Hate offers no choices or compromise, and attempts to crush it make it grow. It forces one to respond in kind.

The final blow to our national psyche, on top of all of the other horrors of the attack, maybe the realization that there are no peaceful solutions to this problem. To be driven to commit acts of violence in response to violence may be necessary and unavoidable; but it's no less monstrous. What we must become in order to defend ourselves is not something that we would consider without provocation.

In an event of this magnitude, there are layers upon layers of tragedy; the personal, the national, the global. In the grandest scale of all, in our own understanding of human nature, our own species, we have come to see ourselves in a new light. We see our hatred of violence ranged against our unlimited capacity for it. We have tried to build ourselves a world of safety.

The horror is that the choice is not ours to make.

-B. C. Silvia