Author Archives: Jer Clifton

About Jer Clifton

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Look up, friend. The world is too beautiful for my eyes alone.
April 13, 2011

This is New

By Jer Clifton

People usually disagree with me or at least try to nuance my indefensibly general statements.  What I said in my “Reflections” post was not uncontroversial, and I want to know what you think.  I do not get to be right just because of the subway thing.  Everyone is free to tell me what they think.  That is why I started the blog.  I have ideas, sometimes crazy ones, always ones in need of improvement, and I just love interacting with people on them.

(I changed this post a bit because I realized that people who did not know me might not catch my lightheartedness.  Please forgive me if I offended anyone.  Thanks for visiting the blog!)

3 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 13, 2011

Unjust Justice

By Jer Clifton

At a news interview tonight, a reporter told me that police are charging Wes with public drunkenness, reckless endangerment, and something else I don’t remember.  The reporter asked me to respond and I want to share:

I think almost dying and getting badly injured is disincentive enough to provide behavioral change.  Assuming that he is not totally heartless, I am sure he also feels extremely embarrassed and ashamed to have endangered others.  I think our sense of justice in America can sometimes miss the mark.  My mother crashed her car last year, no other vehicles involved, in which her car was totaled, and she was almost killed.  She got a ticket and had to pay a considerable fine.  This sort of event or way of thinking is not uncommon.  It’s not the policeman’s fault.  It’s our way of thinking as a society that is to blame.  That is what I want to change.

The reporter also asked me:  Would you have done what you did if you knew that he was drunk?

My answer: Absolutely.  I make mistakes all the time.  Do you?  When I have fallen, physically and metaphorically, people have been there to help me up.  I had all the same problems with selfishness, greed, lust, pride, and bad-decision making before this event, and I still have them.  When I make my next mistake, when you do, we hope someone is there to pick us up.

I was sad to see in some of the comments on the youtube video that people were viciously ridiculing Wes for what has been said he did.  I try to stay away from biblical allusions, as I am rarely confident of God’s meaning, but it seems so appropriate here.  In John 8, Jesus was asked what to do about a criminal (there’s more to this story but irrelevant to the present purpose).  The law said that the criminal should be stoned.  Jesus said, “If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone.”   Of course we need laws and punishment, but maybe sometimes punishment is more unjust than no punishment.

Even if we did find someone who did not make mistakes, I imagine that person would also be wise enough to understand the beauty and importance of each individual.  When we make mistakes, we do not become suddenly worthless.  We are beautiful, maturing, and imperfect individuals.  Again, please do not judge a person based on one time events.  That also applies to me.  I am not defined by one act of heroism either.

Besides, what active and adventuresome person has not ridden MARTA and wondered if they were capable of clearing those tracks?  I certainly have.

2 housekeeping notes:

  1. I made a “Subway Incident” page (link above) as a receptacle for all links and things related to what happened on Sunday and the aftermath.  I’ll be posting about it less often, the worthy posts might wind up there, and I’ll try to keep that page current with the interviews and stuff that I am doing on-air and not.
  2. Alicia has decided that if several hundred people are going to be looking at my blog regularly or irregularly, it should be a bit more presentable.  She reads my stuff and edits at her leisure.  So, if you read something riddled with errors and idiocy, it means it is unadulterated Jer.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 12, 2011

More local news coverage

By Jer Clifton

The AJC, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, picked it up and it is currently their lead story on their main page.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 12, 2011

Reflections

By Jer Clifton

The last 30 hours have brought a whirl of reflections into my brain.  Some are not important.  For example, I could have sworn that the guy who jumped onto the tracks was wearing a white shirt, and he is decidedly not.  It’s crazy what you can get straight-up wrong.  I have reflections about feeling manly, that my strength was useful for something besides lifting heavy boxes and opening stubborn jars.  I reflect on death and our transience on this earth.  I also have a number of reflections as I compare this event to what happened seven years ago in London when I checked that thief into those slot machines (maybe I’ll post that story sometime).  But the one thought, or rather, the one train of thought worth sharing, is one that contains something genuinely new and exciting to me.

The film Love Actually is a good teacher.  It does a great job at showing how love is indeed much more prevalent than one might realize–just go to a big airport and watch people as they reunite.  The kisses are clumsy.  Everyone is hugging.  Love is thick and human.  I believe that despite monstrous war, greed, and avarice, love is actually more defining of our collective existence, only we rarely see it’s enormity and take note.  Sunday’s events proved to be another good teacher of how much love permeates my existence.  For example, I already knew my wife loved me desperately before this whole thing happened.  But apparently, my understanding did not come close to plumbing the massive depths of that love.  Likewise, I knew a number of people thought I was a good guy, but I had no idea how many people genuinely cared for me until I received several hundred emails and texts over the last few days.  But Sunday’s events proved a good teacher for a similar yet different reason.

Most of the texts and emails I received were effusive in their praise.  In many I was called a hero.  Being called a “hero” is a first for me and has had a surprising effect.  I love telling stories, but apparently only ones in which I am being a goofball.  This one I can’t seem to accurately tell without making myself look brave and heroic, and it makes me cringe.

Bravery is for special people, right?  Heroism is for really really awesome people, right?  Without ever fully articulating it, it has nevertheless been my belief that only a select few were truly brave and heroic.  So how can I tell this story which seems inextricable from my own acts of bravery?  In telling it, I feel like I am not just bragging a little, a long standing tradition of mine which I enjoy and have come to master; I am bragging a lot.

But I am conveniently mistaken in my understanding of heroism.  In truth, heroism is normal.  Bravery is normal.  Just like how love is in fact more abundant than selfishness and greed, bravery and heroism is more defining of our world than cowardice.

This is not some clever way of coming to terms with calling myself a hero (each time I say that I think of the song, “I can be your hero baby…”) or making my readers feel good about themselves ( Say “You’re a hero!”  “No, you’re a hero.”  “No, No, you’re a hero.” in a consecutively less sincere and higher pitched voice).  This seems to me to just be a rational response to the evidence.

I do not have the energy to give this point the passionate, intelligent argument it deserves or needs.  But I will say this: its seems ludicrous to suggest that the population on flight 93 were composed of the bravest people in America who by happenstance found themselves on the same flight.  It seems absurd to think that the firefighters serving at the World Trade Center were somehow a collection significantly braver and more heroic than those firefighters throughout the rest of the country, as if there was something magical in New York City drinking water.

Instead, these types of events, in which normal people act heroically, reveals more about what is normal than the person who happens to be acting.  This blows my mind!

A great many of us are heroes.  I am fortunate to enjoy some proof of my own courage, but having courage is not what makes me different.  It makes me normal, and that says something about all of us and should inform our perceptions of each other.  As we look at our mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, we should recognize that they too are brave people.  They are heroes deserving respect.  For evidence will not make them a hero.  It will merely reveal what they already are.

So love is more abundant than hate; heroism and courage is more widespread than cowardice.  But that’s only a start.  What I want for all of us is a radically altered perspective of the world which recognizes more accurately its incalculable glory and beauty.  This is not some blind optimism conjured by the hysterics associated with dramatic life-and-death situations.  I vigorously defend this confidence, and try to make it infectious, in a manuscript entitled Therefore Joy.  The book’s train of thought, grounded in the most basic beliefs shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, leaves me in a place where I expect to find things like beauty, love, and heroism around every corner.  These ideas, this insatiable expectation that I will see more and more joyous sights, has changed my life and the lives of a few of my friends, but that is all the change I have been capable of so far.

During the Fox5 interview, the reporter asked me what I was still hoping to get out of this experience.  A number of things popped into my head.  For example, I would really like to meet up with Wes someday, have a beer, and make sure he’s ok.  I would really like to learn more about trains.  Mostly and especially, I really need some sleep.  But what I was particularly excited about is something that has already started happening; people are paying attention.  Maybe if enough people check out my blog, or subscribe to it, I can convince a publisher to take a chance on me, and I can finally get these ideas out there where they might be helpful for more people.  Besides that, I’m good to go, which clearly means that I am ridiculously blessed.

Thanks to all of you who have written and shown your support and love over the past day or so.  I am sorry I have not been able to reply to everyone.  Also, you can likely expect us to return to our regularly scheduled programming soon.  I promised my mother to keep my adventures more intellectual than real for a while.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 11, 2011

Link to the Fox5 Story

By Jer Clifton

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/man-saves-man-from-fall-on-marta-tracks-041111

I’ll have some reflections on this whole experience up soon.

1 Comment   |  tags: , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 11, 2011

Fox 5 Picked Up the Subway Story

By Jer Clifton

FYI, Fox5/WAGA TV Reporter Aungelique Proctor and cameraman Gerard came to my house and interviewed me about the incident.  It should be on at 5pm tonight, and I think 6pm too.  They think they can get the feed from the subway cameras that should cover the whole incident.

Time for me to find out how much I’m making up : )

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April 10, 2011

Why I Was Late for Work Today

By Jer Clifton

Later the police told me that about once a year somebody falls from the platform onto the train tracks of Atlanta’s public transit system.  This year, I guess, it happened about 20 feet from where I was standing.

I am on my way to band practice.  It’s about 3:45, and I am staring down to my left where the train will approach, even though the sign says that it won’t be here for another 11 minutes.  I’m running late again.

I hear a crashing noise to my right and screams from the platform on the other side of the tracks.  I peer over the edge of my platform, and, sure enough, 20 or so feet down there is a white male crumpled between the tracks and the third rail.

I run down towards him, throwing off my sunglasses, backpack, ipod, and flip flops.  I am thinking, “This is kinda like a House episode I just watched.”  I’m also happy that I have just looked at the screen, and I know we should have 10 minutes to get the guy out before the train hits him.  “This will be so easy,” I think to myself, “I can totally get this guy out.”  I am about to jump down when someone next to me screams,

“Don’t touch him!  Don’t touch him!  You’ll fucking die!  The electricity!  Don’t fucking touch him!”

I never turned.  I never saw his face.  So I have no idea who that guy was.  But the screaming guy to my left, through sheer vocal intensity, stopped me from jumping in.  I had not even thought about electricity.

I crouch down on the platform directly above the guy who had fallen and for a second or two I don’t know what to do.  I keep glancing down the tracks where the oncoming train will appear and looking at the guy.

The guy who fell in looks epileptic.  He is convulsing and seems unconscious.  At that point another guy jumps into the middle of the track.  He is about to help when that same screaming voice from my left subdues him as well.  He stands there, looking at the convulsing man crumpled in the train tracks, up at me, then back down at the man.  I didn’t know what to do either.

He stops convulsing and is hardly moving.  Then I hear somebody else from the far platform start to encourage the man to get up, and I think, at the moment, that is the best thing I can do.  For the next 15 or so seconds, I feel like I am just being a FitWit personal trainer, my day job.  I start out by saying,

“My name is Jer.  I am standing above you because you have fallen down in the tracks.  You need to know where you are.  You are in danger of getting shocked and we can’t touch you.  It’s up to you.  So dig deep and stand up.”

To be honest, I don’t know if I said all those things exactly, but I remember telling him my name and where he was in a loud, surprisingly calm voice.  I get louder and louder and eventually scream at him “Man the fuck up and stand up!”  As I explain the situation to him, he stirs a bit more, but he is still extremely slow and lethargic.

“Get the fuck up!” I scream.

He moves some more and this time touches something.  Electric shocks flash up and down his body.  He’s now filthy, but I worry that the black marks are not just grease and dirt but scorch marks.

I scream something like, “You need to ignore it and stand up!”  Getting shocked seems to make him realize what a dangerous situation he’s in.  He’s finally ready to shake himself awake and get up.  His eyes are blinking as he struggles to prop himself up on his elbow.  He looks up at me and reaches out his hand.

I realized in retrospect that there was definitely a moment of decision.  Nobody had touched him yet, and he was clearly getting constantly shocked by who knows how many volts.  But I remember thinking, “I can’t leave him hanging.”

I grab his hand and pull.  I realize I am getting shocked through his hand.  It’s repetitive and jabbing pain, like sticking my finger repetitively in an electrical outlet.  My adrenaline is pumping like mad.

I pull him up to his feet and drag him roughly over the edge of the platform, fully clear of ledge. He collapses on the ground as people clap and holler.  After looking at him for a second, I tell someone to call 911.  The guy is clearly in shock and showering me with thanks saying, “It was you man.  You did it.”  I tell him it was him, that he did it, and then I collapse too.

Epilogue:

We sat there panting for a bit.  He seemed ok, but delirious, and I still didn’t know if all the black marks on him were burns or grease.  But I think he was just happy to be alive, and I was too.

We sat there grinning at each other.  Talk about an instant bonding experience.  That’s when I asked him his name, and I think he said Wes.  I’m not sure.  Wes, I hope you read this.  We should meet up and you can buy me a beer!

But cops came and took him away  I sat for a bit longer before gathering my flip flops, ipod, etc., scattered over the platform.  As I stood there, waiting for the next train I guess, I realized just how many people had been watching.  There were probably about 300 people, but who knows.  I was in shock too.

That’s when somebody on the other platform pointed me out and said that I was the one who pulled Wes out.  The cop thought it was someone next to me at first, but then the guy said, “No, that guy,” pointing at me.

“Holy shit.  I guess that really happened,” I thought to myself.

The cop asked in a loud voice across the train tracks, “We need a statement from you.  Can you come to the station?”

“Can I just do it here?” I asked, “I’m late for work.”

The officer nodded his head and sent another officer to run through the maze that is Five Points MARTA station to my platform.  He had me jot down my contact info.  As I was doing so, I told him that I was being shocked as I pulled Wes out.  The officer immediately insisted that I get checked out.

At the station, after I sat in a room by myself and tried to write legibly, I got to talk to the officers.

Apparently, the third rail has 750 volts running through it.  If Wes would have touched it directly he would have been killed instantly.  If his foot would have just nicked it as I was pulling him out, we both would have been killed.  I was dumbfounded.  I had almost left Alicia a widow at age 26.

I’ll talk a bit more later about what I learned from this whole ordeal and other thoughts about it.  But I just wanted to get the story down first.

…

I just found this video on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlgtHymISdA

18 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

April 10, 2011

My Last (and longest) Post on the Middle East

By Jer Clifton

I just finished Professor Yaqub’s 24 lectures on the history of the Middle East 1915-9/11.  I found it very interesting, and remarkably depressing.  Alicia is going through the same thing right now as she is studying the history of development practice.  It feels like a history of dashed hopes.  This, I think, is true of all history, but this type of history especially.

At the end of the lecture series, Yaqub categorized what amounts to two camps, with most people falling somewhere in between, with responses to the question of why Middle Eastern-US relations are so bad.  One camp points to specific modern day grievances, such as American support of Israeli oppression, the iraqi sanctions that led to roughly 500,000 iraqi deaths, and the presence of American infidel troops on holy Islamic soil on the Arabian peninsula.  Another camp points to specific ancient cultural and civilizational differences that make bad relations in many ways inevitable no matter what happens.  He mentions Bernard Lewis and Huntington as the big names in this second camp.

A few weeks ago, I finished Bernard Lewis’ “What went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.”  I had just gotten the book from the library, having no idea that it was an important work in the field, and by an important thinker, who was often invited by GWB to the White House to advise on Middle East policy. (Lewis was also the guy who said that Middle Easterners respect power and a firm-hand.  “Staying the course” was then the wisest strategy in nearly any tussle with them.)

Lewis’s basic idea is fairly straightforward: what went wrong? Christianity was initially the political and religious rival of an emerging Islam.  But, for years and years, this rivalry was not taken seriously because it was painfully obvious to anyone who travelled to medieval Europe and medieval Arabia that the Arab world was way way WAY ahead of them in virtually everything: the arts, human rights, literature, mathematics, architecture….every standard of civilizational progress.  (Interesting fact: for centuries, oppressed peoples fled Europe for shelter in the more tolerant and peaceful Arab world.)  Eventual domination of Christianity and the west by Islam and the Arabs seemed inevitable.

As we all know, however, the moors were kicked out of Spain.  The Ottomans were stopped twice at Vienna.  And the tide slowly started to turn.  For years, middle easterners had not even been looking at the west, assuming that they were barbarians and generally pathetic.  Suddenly, they were being forced to adopt western ways of doing things just to keep up, especially ways of conducting warfare, but also things like clocks and standard measurements of weights.  Not only was it necessary to adopt western ways of fighting, they had to have westerners come and teach them how to create effective armies, a huge blow to civilizational pride.  The knock out punch, if you could call it that, was Napoleon’s escapade in Egypt, in which a relatively small force of 30,000 Europeans captured what I believe was the most populous Muslim state at the time.  Lewis thinks that this “clash of civilizations,” a phrase he coined, led to  an underlying resentment and hatred which permeates and undermines western-middle eastern relations today.

While I was initially compelled by this theory, I have come to believe that it is not very relevant.  America was widely liked at the beginning of the 20th century.  A benign power not yet tested, most American interest in the region was philanthropic, and middle easterner greatly preferred America to France or England.

I think two factors did more to erode the American position in the Middle East than anything else: our willingness to do almost anything to contain the Soviets and our continual support for Israel.

Why does American values stop so quickly at the water’s edge?  Anyone who knows me knows that I very selfishly desire meaning over money.  In the same way, I wish America was a little more philanthropic in its foreign policy; we would all feel better about ourselves.

Will Airhart, in a comment to an earlier post, mentioned that when we have intervened, it  has not worked out.  I want it to be clear that I am not advocating interventionism at this time.  I am simply advocating not helping governments suppress it citizens.  In the Middle East, we have generally acted as if we were France in 1780, but instead of coming to aid America, we provided arms to England in order to suppress the American revolution.

This sort of thing we keep doing, even now that the Soviet Union is gone.

I love the Kurds.  The Kurds in Turkey and Iraq have been oppressed for years.  The reason why they have not been allowed to form their own country seems to be that Turkey is an ally of the US, a NATO member.  This pushes the US to not allow the Kurds in Iraq to form their own state either, because empowered Turkish Kurds might threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.

I love America for the Marshall Plan, for our overall restraint post WWII, for our continual  evolving government, for our constitution, for many things.  But I hate America for how its treated the people of the Middle East.

Ok.  I want to talk about more fun things now.  My next book is Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict the XVI.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Middle Eastern History/Politics

April 10, 2011

The Good Old Days of Exclusive Architecture

By Jer Clifton

This is a random thought I had while biking home and it is probably false:

Architecture is so liberal these days, if you can use that word.  Gone are the days when people just tried to build the coolest looking building they could.  Now we have to appeal to the needs of many different groups.  Disabled people need ramps.  Old people need to live on one floor.  Other’s need bathrooms every two feet.  And laws require safety features built in everywhere, like big rooms require big doors and multi-levels require fire escapes.  I wonder what buildings would look like if people were still just trying to build the coolest looking buildings they could.  I wonder how our modern needs for buildings have limited architecture as an art form.

2 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Random Thoughts

April 8, 2011

Some Background on Osama and Afghanistan I did not know

By Jer Clifton

So when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Americans needed a way to supply the Mujahideen in landlocked Afghanistan.  So they stopped applying pressure on Pakistan for their human rights abuses and instead gave them several hundred million dollars in aid.  Eventually, under Reagan, Pakistan would be the 3rd largest recipient of aid, trailing Israel and Egypt.

Pakistan recieved some discretion regarding which groups fighting the Soviets received American money and supplies.  They tended to pick conservative islamists.

America in the meantime worked to swell the ranks of the Mujahadeen.  The CIA helped recruit tens of thousands from across the middle eastern world asking them to come to Pakistan, be trained, given arms, and fight the Soviets.  From 1982-1992, about 35,000 fighters were recruited from over 40 Islamic countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Why were so many willing to come and risk their lives?  Of those who responded, the great appeal was to take part in Jihad.  “Mujahideen” comes from the word Jihad.  As you know, “jihad” means religious struggle, and it can mean either internal struggle against personal selfishness and unforgiveness, or external struggle against infidels.  This is a debate that has been going on within Islam for centuries.

In the 1980s, the United States took a strong position in this internal debate, saying yes, you should definitely fight the godless soviets.  In fact, Holy War, and most specifically the plight of the Mujahideen was something somewhat romanticized in American pop culture, in movies like Rambo 3 and in reporting by people like Dan Rather.

One of the CIA’s recruits was a Saudi named Osama Bin Laden.  He was the 17th son of a wealthy and prominent Saudi and was sent not to fight as much as to be an emissary and prove Saudi Arabia’s support for the Mujahideen.  Some say he was on the CIA’s payroll at the time.  Maybe, maybe not, but he certainly worked with and for agencies that the CIA also funded.  After the Soviets gave up, he started to build his al Qaeda network from the connections he had developed in fighting the Soviets.  Eventually, the Taliban took over Afghanistan and brought some measure of order at the price of social and political oppression.

I have no conclusions for all of this.  I have no synthesis, except that we should try not to supply and encourage crazy behavior.

All of these posts on American chicanery in the Middle East might make one think that I condemn America for it.  I don’t really.  I think the Soviets were really bad guys.  Maybe I’ll post a blog that will prove it to everyone, but that doesn’t sound very interesting at the moment.

I’m really learning alot from this Salim Yaqub guy.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Middle Eastern History/Politics