Let us pause today and remember the banality of evil, the awful carnage, and the heroism of that day in 2001. Some things it prompts me to remind myself as I reminisce about that morning with the beautiful weather and the ugliest images:

Remember how the pursuit of one group’s favorite ordering of affairs, said to be divinely inspired, contains its own beauty in the eyes of the group but destroys beauty as well as order when the group tries to impose it on others. Stay disgusted with humanity’s immense capacity to destroy what it claims to find good. Stay skeptical of any absolute claims. Remember we are metaphorically flying planes into the twin towers of the environment of Earth, making these towers collapse slowly. Refrain from making today’s commemoration nationalistic or religion-based; the same for every commemoration of good or evil acts. Create something beautiful every day as much as you can, as humanity destroys beauty all too rapidly.