Jonah Lehrer on the morning after:
The mood of London is a strange one this morning. As Auden wrote in “Musee des Beaux Arts”: “everything turns away/Quite leisurely from the disaster.” He was right. Outside I hear buses, not sirens. The sun is shining, and the usual crowd has gathered in the Starbucks across the street. Having been in NY for 9/11, I find something deeply inspiring about the way these cities dust themselves off.
But there is no doubt that the conversation has changed. The peace, love and understanding of July 6th has morphed into questions of who, what and why. It’s time to count the dead. Gone is Bono and Geldof. The TV’s are now saturated with incessant loops of the Police Commissioner explaining exactly how much he doesn’t know. It makes me sad to say, but no one in this city is thinking about melting glaciers and rising oceans. Let’s hope our leaders give us some news to cheer us up.
: And on Global Voices, they’re aggregating views from the Muslim blogopshere. They’re quoting condolences. I wonder how representative that is. If only it were.
: LATER: Various commenters are going after me for that last night. I’ll repeat what I said in response to one in the comments on the post above:
No, Ethan, I am saying that if the good sentiments in those blog posts were truly representative of the street and leadership of the Muslim world, we would see that condemnation and legal recourse and broad demonstrations. I truly wish it is representative. But it is a legitimate question to wonder whether it is.
