Special Forum: 9/11 and Everyday Life - JMB 2.3

Journal of Mundane Behavior Editorial Board Statement on the Events of September 11/2001

Statement © 2001, Journal of Mundane Behavior. For reprint, archiving, or other redistribution permissions, please contact the managing editor.

On September 11/2001, the world saw the dramatic disdain the human species tends to have for life. Potentially thousands were killed, thousands more were injured, and millions, if not billions, were affected by the display of burning and collapsing buildings in New York and Washington DC. Thousands, if not millions, more will be affected in the coming weeks and months by the inevitable reprisals, counter-reprisals, and the cycle of strike/counterstrike we only fear will come.

What does any of this have to do with mundane behavior or everyday life? The cynical version of the answer to this question might be something along the lines of this: everyday life is characterized by violence, counterviolence, or the fear of violence. And terrorism, at least in principle, is not specifically designed to kill people or damage property (though it does a hell of a job of these things), but rather to destroy our common faith in the mundane world, instilling fear and dread, and destroying a people’s sense of the routine as a haven from turmoil. But this is not the place for that analysis.

Rather, psychologists generally agree that one of the best things to help people cope with a severe trauma is to get back into a routine – to claim some kind of normalcy. And this is where Journal of Mundane Behavior can help. By providing a deeper understanding of the patterns that undergird our normal, everyday lives, we can come to live them better – or in this case, learn to live them all over again. Furthermore, since terrorism’s goal is to destroy everydayness by instilling fear, the only way to combat its effects is by maintaining a sense of normalcy in the face of any threat.

But, the entire definition of “normal, routine, everyday life” will change from here on out, both in the US and abroad as a result of Tuesday’s events. We will all have to learn how to live normal, routine, boring, ordinary lives once again. We hope that the virtual pages of JMB can contribute to providing a space in which this healing process can begin.

On behalf of the JMB editorial board, we offer all of you, whether directly affected by this tragedy or not, our sympathies and thoughts. We hope that all those you care about are safe and accounted for, and mourn the loss of those who aren’t. We express our solidarity with the victims of terror around the world, whose courage and fortitude in the face of such incursions into their everyday lives remind us that terror and violence need not be met with more terror and violence. We also express our solidarity with Muslims and other Arab Americans, whose normalcy we hope will not be contaminated by any backlash as a result of this week's events.

And we hope that as we relearn how to live our everyday lives in the face of the changes Tuesday requires of us, we learn how to live better with others so that these events never need happen again.