( Preface: September 11th, 2021 marks the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy at the twin towers. For my generation, the surreal images of the two commercial flights ramming into the towers in quick succession will remain forever etched in our memories. I was in Kochi at that time, at my brother’s place, when the news channel we were watching suddenly switched to show near-live images of the attack. What we witnessed looked unbelievable, it took some time for reality to sink in. But all of us knew, deep in our hearts, that from that moment onwards, the geopolitical balance would irrevocably change. We knew that America wouldn’t take this attack lying down, and certainly would do everything in its power to hunt the perpetrators down, but what we didn’t quite realize at that time at least, is how much society itself would change and reorganize itself. The tremors of 09/11 rocked not only the foundations of peace outside, but transformed the way people related and trusted one another. Government Institutions underwent massive changes, and the intelligence community rewrote the rules of operation. Surveillance became the norm, and privacy, a lost cause. The reverberations of the 09/11 attacks are still felt; its tremors continue to dictate policies and protocols. Several thousand innocent human lives were lost that fateful morning, and many more continue to lose their health and life as an aftereffect of living and working through the calamity. There is no recompense to this loss, nothing we can give, say or do can assuage the grief of the families who lost their dear ones that day. Many of them couldn’t even get a piece of their beloved’s bodies, to give them a proper burial. This essay is dedicated to all those who never made it out of the twin towers in time)
The words “worth” and “value” have extraordinarily sensitive connotations, and are often misunderstood. Whenever something is dearly prized, but cannot be priced, it indicates worth. On the other hand, when a thing can be exchanged for something else, there is a value. Therefore, by definition, that which cannot be separated from me, or is not available for exchange or trade, cannot be valued, and consequently cannot be priced. That thing or the quality we cannot trade becomes priceless and invaluable (the original etymological sense of this word is that which transcends value). In a healthy society, there is always a delicate balance between things of worth and value. Some commodities have to be exchanged for survival between people for value, but there are many things that cannot be so exchanged, they have to be shared, gifted, and allow the gift to circulate freely in society going from one hand to another without restriction. A mother’s love, for instance, is given freely, and the child receives it as such. When the child grows into an adult, the gift of the mother is circulated as love within the family, and outside, and for generations to come. At no point, can a price tag be attached to it? The moment a child quotes a price for the love received from its mother, the quality of a gift disappears and love becomes a commodity and a caricature of itself. Lewis Hyde, the Canadian poet, in his book “The Gift” writes with sublime sensitivity on the nature and the difference between a gift and a commodity. In Hindu theology, the Kali Yuga, or the age of Kali, is when everything is up for sale, and humanity has forgotten the art of living life in the present, as a gift. If a society is predominantly worth-based, it becomes a gift economy, such as those that preceded the industrial revolution and still prevalent in few native societies, that haven’t yet felt the touch of modernity and its capitalistic attitudes; on the contrary, if excessive importance is placed on the value of the exchange, a market economy predominates, and everything in it becomes available for a price, including deep human values: love, compassion, charity, friendship, and even life.
Twenty years ago, when the twin towers fell down on 09/11, the world watched in stunned silence at the magnitude, tragedy, and audaciousness of this act of terrorism. Televisions across the globe, closely followed the trajectory of one plane after another, as it bore into the top floors of the World Trade Center. What followed the initial shock was surreal indeed. The force of the impact was so powerful, it caused the proud towers to structurally fold in like a pack of cards, whipping up a mushrooming cloud of dust and heat which curled outward, crushing and killing several hundred, and burying thousands more in the avalanche of debris and rubble smothered the city for miles. For a few hours, time stopped, and the buzzing city of New York came to a tearful, shell-shocked, and emotional standstill. The pride of the city, the symbol of America’s power, the twin towers weren’t seen kissing the clouds anymore. When people looked up to where it was a few hours ago, all they could see was a deep void in the heart of the city, within the soul of America itself, filled only with the eerie sound of fire engines, sirens, inconsolable wailing, and dazed human commotion.
In the immediate aftermath of the event, hundreds were reported dead, and many more went missing. The actual number of victims is still unknown. What happened on 09/11 was undoubtedly an act of terrorism, but once the initial emotions subsided a little, it became apparent that the tragedy was caused by two commercial flights carrying paid passengers. Therefore, the airlines could be held accountable for the lives lost or injured. If the kith and kin of victims (about a few thousand of them at that time) ever decided to sue for financial compensation ( which was definitely bound to happen), the airlines would go bankrupt. And if the airline industry collapsed, the collapse of the American economy is sure to follow suit. Therefore, to appease the powerful Airline lobby and avoid the economic debacle that could follow, within thirteen days of the tragedy, the Bush Government hastily created a Victim compensation fund of billions of dollars. The basic premise behind VCF was to assign a monetary value to the victim’s life, disburse a tax-free compensation to their nearest family members, and have them sign a document forfeiting the right to go to court against the airlines. The creation of such a compensation fund, its rationale, and its disbursement were unprecedented in history, at least the scale and the ethical imperatives around it. Not only was the fund and the accompanying statutes on the disbursement of the fund, hastily and loosely drafted by the congress, it also left a gaping hole in the very interpretation of the word compensation itself. The statute did not treat all lives as equal, instead, it hinged the calculation of the compensation to the earnings of the victim at the time of the tragedy and projected earnings in the future. This interpretation had grave repercussions. It meant that those victims who had held plum jobs on the top floors of the WTC building, making truckloads of money – than the average firemen, cafeteria workers, and the janitors in the building – would benefit by getting more compensation. The value for human life, according to the bill, was to reflect the market value of each life lost or injured and not its worth. It would have been so much easier and so much fairer if the statute had simply mandated the compensation to be based on the worth of a life, which is the same for everyone – rich or poor, and each victim receives an equal amount of money. The administration of the fund would also have been pretty straightforward. Instead, what Congress mandated was that each life is valued based on current income value. Such a mandate was never going to be easy to implement. It needed a man, a lawyer with a different kind of practice and experience.
To administer such a fund, Kenneth R. Feinberg, a renowned American attorney and a specialist at mediating high profile monetary settlements and corporate disputes, was appointed as the “Special master”. He was given the difficult job of working out the formula for estimating how much each victim should be valued at, and furthermore to convince and disburse the money to the maximum number of families within a two-year period. Feinberg also had to procure a legal guarantee from the beneficiaries that they wouldn’t litigate against the airlines on this account. This was a difficult ask, morally and ethically taxing for even the most consummate of Lawyers. When the President of the country offered Feinberg this job, he considered it his patriotic obligation and accepted the assignment pro bono (without a legal fee for his services. Feinberg did realize as he undertook the work, that nothing in his vast experience could help him navigate what lay in store for him and his team in the months ahead. For an agonizing thirty-three months, Feinberg, and his staff worked tirelessly, meeting the families of the victims, who often brought their personal stories, deep sorrow, helplessness, and a feeling of betrayal to the negotiating table. The families were aware the compensation offered to them wasn’t equal or fair. Many blamed Feinberg and his team for willifully jeopardizing their compensation, unwilling to acknowledge that this legal team was only executing what the Government passed as law. Feinberg faced pressure from both sides: on the one hand, families and employers of victims who died rich, were demanding compensation in millions of dollars, and on the other hand, the victims from lower-income brackets, who really were the only breadwinners of their families couldn’t be compensated more. The inequality was blatant, Mr. Feinberg knew and felt it deeply, but the job had to be done.
Over two years, Feinberg oversaw the cases of nearly 900 applicants personally; patiently and empathetically heard their stories, shared their pain and loss, and found ways to touch them on a moral and ethical common ground to arrive at a consensus. Congress had set a time limit to the fund, and time was fast running out. Never before had Feinberg felt the weight of his actions as much as he did in this case. It squeezed him emotionally. Despite the flawed rationale for compensation and the pace at which they were working, Feinberg’s team disbursed 7.1 billion dollars. Twenty years later, Feinberg reflects “Doing it meant no sleep, constant stress and asking myself whether I was doing the right thing,”. Both sides — the wealthy victims and those who were not — put him under the barrel. The problem lay in treating human life in terms of value, and not in terms of worth. If the question asked in the fund was: what is a human life worth?, the answer is: invaluable, there is no exchange value for life. But the fund chose to put a value on a life based on the earning capacity of the individual, which greatly diminished the intent and ethical grounding of the act. In a tragedy such as this, the fund should have considered worth, not value, as the principle of compensation. The fact that it did not, reflects a dilution, a misinterpretation of human values and priorities.
Feinberg did his job. Nearly 97% of the eligible families received compensation. The rest 3% (94 families) rejected the offer and chose to litigate. Only two did neither. And Feinberg distinctly remembers them. One was a Catholic priest, whose brother had died in the tragedy. Feinberg offered him 1.5 million to set up a charity, or anything else he wished to do; but the priest refused, stating “ he wouldn’t put a value on God’s will”. The other was an eighty-two-year-old woman, who had lost someone close. She received Feinberg at her home with warmth, heard him out patiently, asked him to put the papers on the dining table and leave. She never signed the papers. She said, “she wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the worth of a life”.
In 2005, Feinberg wrote a book “ What is life worth?” about his experience with the 09/11 compensation fund and the process of dealing with the victims. It is an honest account of a man, a lawyer, struggling to make sense of his actions and outcomes. In 2020, the book was adapted into a film “Worth” starring Micheal Keaton in the role of Feinberg. It was released on the Netflix platform last month. Great performances, and a good narrative flow, keep the movie close to the heart of the issue. A movie, at best, can showcase a few families, the impact the tragedy had on their lives, and the attempt to provide compensation for their loss — which the movie does brilliantly. The screenplay simplifies the complexity of human emotions involved, but to an extent, that is inevitable in art. The episodic treatment of the narrative brings to life the nature of the tragedy and the repercussions of it on different survivors. Though the tragedy itself made no difference between the rich and the poor, the white-collar and the blue-collar, it affected all equally; in its aftermath, the man-made differences between people were greatly exacerbated, and the Victims’ compensation fund, only deepened the divide and sense of frustration. That even a calamity as tragic and man-made such as 09/11 was transformed into a power game, a lobbyists’ playground, is sensitively brought out in the film. There are moments when we are deeply moved, and a feeling of nausea rises from the belly. We are forced to ask ourselves the question: does human life has worth or value?
I request my readers to watch the movie if you can. On the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy, “Worth” exposes a different dimension to it. We forget the terrorists, their brutal acts of terrorism, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and all of that. Enough has been spoken, seen, and written about it. Instead, in “Worth” we are made to focus on the other side of such a tragedy, the inequalities of society it brings out, the distinction between worth and value, and above all, the overwhelming insensitivity to human life that is fast becoming the hallmark of a capitalistic society. These are serious things to ponder upon, and the movie sets the stage for it.
I referred to Lewis Hyde’s book at the beginning of this essay. Talking about courts, arbitrations, and compensation. he writes: “the law and the courts are all ways of stabilizing peoples who have no common God, who do not trust each other, who are all strangers and who live with an attenuated sense of time and risk..” In a capitalistic world, man treats the majority as strangers. The sense of commune, the quality of belonging, the ability to trust and be fair to each other – these are the signs of the health of a society; in its absence or gradual disappearance, we lose out on the very thing that makes us authentically human.
God bless…
Yours in mortality,
Bala
Good one! Will watch this one!
Thanks Kavya. Yes, worth watching.