Learn From It

The best things in this world—or at least the most robust and resilient—seem to be those which arise or emerge, forming a new meta-space. Like the power of 10,000 voices all singing the same song. Like 10,000 people having a moment of silence, for that matter. Something arises from below, something new is born. And no single person or thing directed the creation of that something-new.

I remember when the Twin Towers were hit. I was sitting in my living room in San Francisco all day long after it happened. I was home in time to see the second plane hit in real-time. I watched and waited, as did we all. Even though it was in this country, it was still very far away. Even though it was in this country, it was more importantly awful that human beings—and not just American human beings—were hurt and killed.

I was a spectator, tuned into any one of a handful of cable news channels, at the whip-end of the reports. Nearly four years later, technology has made the event of the London Bombings much more of a human event, much less of an over-there event. Click on that link and you'll see what I mean.

Over Here is, of course, over here. But Over There is also over here when people all contribute. It's one world; we're all human beings; we all care in our own ways whether expressed or not.

That page at technorati.com is largely an emergent phenomenon. Technorati gave it presentability and a place to be, but it's an organic thing, growing into what it will not because technorati drives it, but instead from a bubbling up of individual contributions into something heartbreakingly sad, lovely in its humanity.

And humanity's loveliness and tenderness needs all the visibility it can get in horrific times like these.

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