On September 11, 2001, Rick Rescorla, the head of security for Morgan Stanley, helped evacuate 2,700 employees from the south tower at the World Trade Center. He died when the building collapsed after he reentered it to make sure no one else needed help.
At the time of the attacks, James B. Stewart covered Wall Street for The New Yorker. The editor of the magazine asked him to concentrate on stories related to 9/11 and the financial district. During his research, Stewart discovered that many people who worked on floors both above and below those occupied by Morgan Stanley failed to survive the attacks. Many told Stewart that Rescorla was responsible for the superior performance of Morgan Stanley during the evacuation.
In 1993, after a car bomb was detonated in the garage of the World Trade Center, Rescorla emphasized the virtues of the military adage: “Proper prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance.” Before the attacks, he drilled employees on proper evacuation techniques and when the need arose in the fall of 2001 they were ready. While singing Cornish fight songs to calm nerves and create a sense of solidarity, he descended down the stairs of the south tower with the employees and brought them to safety.
A public relations representative gave Stewart the unlisted number of Rescorla’s wife, Susan Collins. Stewart visited Collins and started his article, “The Real Heroes Are Dead,”with the story of the middle-aged love affair that blossomed between Rescorla and Collins.
In a nod to Hollywood, they “met cute” when Rescorla was jogging bare foot as part of his research for a play that he was writing and Collins was walking Buddy, her charmingly named dog. Both had endured failed marriages along with the other trials and tribulations that middle age is heir to including Rescorla’s battle with prostate cancer. They persevered, took dancing lessons, brought a house in the country, and married.
Rescorla was born and raised in Cornwall, England. He fought in Cyprus and Rhodesia in the 1950s where he became an ardent foe of communism. Figuring that the next big battle against communism would be staged in Vietnam, Rescorla emigrated to the United States where he enlisted in the Army and fought with distinction in Vietnam before obtaining creative writing and law degrees from the University of Oklahoma. Collins was raised in a cocoon of upper middle class privilege only to fall from grace after two marriages ended in divorce.
In remembrance of 9/11, I reread the article every year as the anniversary approaches and it always brings tears to my eyes. It is irresistible, timeless: two people find true love late in life only to have the happy ending spoiled by cruel, senseless death. Life has a way of taking tragic turns.
When conceiving this essay to commemorate 9/11, I had vague plans to place Rescorla’s story in the context of the three types of souls that Plato addressed in The Republic: gold for philosopher-kings, silver for soldiers, and bronze or iron for everyone else – like me. Soldiers – like Rescorla – and the martial ethos they embody constitute a continuing threat to civilian rule, but they are invaluable in times of existential danger.
It is easy for physical cowards like me to criticize or fear soldiers and their codes, but when the going gets tough I am the first to look to them for leadership and bravery. On my best day, I imagine following Rescorla back into the south tower. However, alone I would probably take the path of least resistance and run like hell.
Wanting to see a photo of Recorla, I Googled his name and, in addition to finding a website devoted to his memory, I stumbled onto a story on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday that ran on the before the anniversary this year. It told of an opera based on a book that Stewart wrote about Rescorla called, Heart of a Soldier, which was debuting that night in San Francisco.
On some level and with absolutely no justification, I had asserted a kind of proprietary interest in the Rescorla-Collins story thinking that I would be one of the few people who would remember it after all of these years. I did not know that Stewart wrote a book about Rescorla or that an opera was in the works. To my chagrin, I was not the only person who was deeply affected by the story. Nevertheless, I somehow felt scooped. Life has a way of exposing and questioning preconceived notions.
After making these discoveries, I went home and picked up my mail, which included the latest edition of The New Yorker. Predictably, the issue was devoted to 9/11 and contained articles by Adam Gopnik and George Packer that strike opposing notes. Packer’s article (appropriately entitled, “Coming Apart”) rehearses the failures and disappointments that we have experienced since 9/11 and laments the continued decline of America’s standing and fortunes.
Packer was one of the prominent so-called “liberal hawks” who supported the invasion of Iraq in the wake of 9/11. Although I do not consider myself to be a liberal, I – like Packer – now regret my naïve support for the war. The justification bandied about at the time – that Saddam Hussein had or was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction – seems hollow, unsatisfying now. The fallback position – that the war was justified as a humanitarian effort to rid Iraq of a dictator – also seems hallow and unsatisfying. Although I stand in awe of the American military in its efforts to deal with the tough – if not impossible – hand that it was dealt, the war and its elusive end seem hollow and unconvincing despite my best efforts to find justification, redemption.
With broader strokes and with a more even handed approach, Gopnik explores the history of what he calls “declinism” as pioneered in 1918 by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West and rehearsed recently by others including Tom Freidman and Michael Mandelbaum in That Used to Be Us.
Gopnik approaches the aftermath of 9/11 from an angle more oblique than Packer by surveying the historical development “declinism” along with its shortcomings and inconsistencies. Ultimately, he concludes that the concept founders on the metaphysical fallacy that we have the ability to predict and control the future.
Personally, the past fifteen years have been a roller coaster ride. More than I care to admit, I bought into the dot.com/new economy happy talk with the gullibility of a convert. When old economic verities reasserted themselves and that bubble exploded, I watched the insanity of the real estate boom with a dash more skepticism, but still was surprised by the depth of the Great Recession. In the face of my failures to foresee the consequences of the invasion of Iraq and the nauseating twists and turns of the economy, I find myself humbled in the face of current events and astounded at the confidence of politicians and the gullibility of citizens.
As Gopnik points out, many – if not most – of us – including Friedman and Mandelbaum – subscribe to the belief that everyone is inherently rational and that rational discourse will ultimately carry the day. Yet, we are confronted – and as I realize now have always been confronted – by the stark reality that most of us make up our minds based on emotions that we dress up with reasons later. Irrational and magical thinking along with paranoia and inappropriate heuristics and biases seem to be built in features of the human brain.
Errors in these processes are amenable to correction by later rational reflection. However, ideologues and their followers short circuit the process by their inability to change their minds when facts collide with their ideologies – they are inoculated against rational discourse and argument only drives them deeper into their rigid thought processes. For instance, Gopnik maintains that a surprising number of Americans do not want improved health care or cleaner air or better infrastructure because they view these goals as “luxurious symbols of an earthly power they despise.”
However, Gopnik points out that adopting an attitude of declinism in the face of such obstacles – as I along with Packer, Friedman, and Mandelbaum have done – is “a bad idea, because no one can have any notion of what will happen next.” Prediction and control hinge on the delusion that we know what we don’t know when, in fact, the threats – and opportunities – are caused by unknown unknowns.
In accordance with our lack of foresight, we are hampered despite our best efforts to foresee or mitigate the risks associated with ideologies, for instance, converting airplanes full of passengers into weapons that cause tall buildings to collapse, nations to betray their ideals, and middle-aged love affairs to end in tragedy.
However, all is not lost. Gopnik asserts that the same lack of foresight allowed Renaissance thinkers to nurture a humanistic point of view that fosters the revolutionary idea:
that while our lives should be devoted to happiness, they’re impoverished without an idea of happiness deeper than mere property-bound prosperity. The special virtue of freedom is … that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.
Voltaire’s admonition to “cultivate your garden” may make more sense than obsessing about the declining fortunes of the United States for the simple reason that obsessing about something may have the effect of causing it. We can only control what we believe, what we do, what we stand for.
Rescorla “cultivated his garden” as well as looking out for the common good. He wrote plays, took dancing lessons, fell in love late in life, and sang songs while he guided 2,700 people to safety. Life has a way of taking unpredictable turns.
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