Today can be painful. It has been painful for me. How it is painful depends on how you see it.

Recently I have been taking classes in graduate school. Many of our discussions in class have focused on various ways of looking at the texts we have studied. During most of the past 50 years, the humanities in the west has looked at texts from a variety of perspectives—feminism, race, colonialism, homosexuality and identity perspectives all remain important ways of seeing both texts and the world. Unfortunately these perspectives that have been attacked as “woke”. While I also have some doubts about the wisdom of the “liberal” approaches to study, I doubt that many of those who throw around the term “woke” really know what it means, let alone have any ability to discuss the philosophical and moral implications of these perspectives—I believe the biggest problem with the objections to “woke” is the failure to recognize what perspective is being used instead of the “woke “ perspectives. If you object to a perspective, shouldn’t you make clear what perspective you are using instead? The reality is that, like it or not, you are already seeing things from some perspective, even if you haven’t defined it or examined its morality (or lack thereof).

I remain skeptical about the approaches based on identity—not because I think they are wrong (in fact, I like to think I am “woke” and that I understand what that means and it’s implications), but because I can’t feel comfortable focusing on one perspective that leaves out others that are just as valid and useful. In short, I want a universal framework for approaching texts and, well, life. Like the search in physics for a universal theory of everything, I often feel like my search may also be a fool’s errand, or at least something that only God can figure out.

I have lived in NYC for 38 years. Twenty-five years ago this morning I was on the computer in our living room getting ready to go to my work, which was located 5 blocks from the World Trade Center. I then worked at a software startup, and no one arrived before 10 or 11am, so I didn’t need to leave until 9 or 9:30am at the earliest. My plan to leave was interrupted by a phone call from my mother in law in Utah, who told us to turn on the television. Instead of going to work, the day was full of watching the television and trying to get the kids from school. Traffic was impossible, the subway was out and just getting my daughter from elementary school took all day. She was among the last few students picked up, including one student who she never saw again at school—we believe because her parent didn’t make it.

Like many of those around us, we were fortunate. But we all knew someone, or knew someone who knew someone. Our city was grieving. And the result was that we walked around with a shockingly different perspective: we were concerned about one another! We asked strangers on the street how they were doing. There was a kind of somber goodwill in our interactions We knew that everyone was mourning and suffering and we mourned and suffered together.

Unfortunately, this feeling was not universal, and it certainly didn’t seem to be the perspective of much of the rest of the United States. In the following weeks, at least it seemed to me, the events of September 11th were wrapped in the flag. We had been attacked, and it was time to raise the flag, roll out the military and take revenge. Those who died that day were no longer people; they were victims who needed to be avenged. The reaction was tribal, even here in New York City, where Muslims, and anyone who looked like they were Muslim, were attacked, no matter how “patriotic” their feelings to the United States might be. We were soon at war, and treating those in the Middle East like we had before September 11th — like they weren’t human beings worth a thought. September 11th became an excuse for excesses like Abu Graib. Of course these excesses weren’t universal, and yes, we did need to take action to keep future attacks from happening. But it seemed to me that the perspective in much of the United States was too often patriotism and its ugly co-conspirator, revenge. I didn’t like the patriotic perspective then, and I am increasingly more disgusted with this perspective now.

I don’t want to pretend that the perspective in New York City after the attacks was universal or perfect. We had disagreements and problems. Muslims were attacked. Many people wrapped the event in the flag, thought we were victims, and wanted revenge. But for a while it seemed to me like we had a different perspective, a better perspective.

That perspective is long gone today, twenty-five years later. As I was walking earlier today in Inwood Hill Park, at the northernmost point of Manhattan, I saw that a temporary memorial was being mounted, part of which was made up of a sea of US flags, which I assume was meant to represent all those killed twenty-five years ago. I was very dismayed and disappointed. It seems like the same perspective is still with us — the perspective that says a Muslim boy living in the US who was 9 years old at the time of the attacks shouldn’t be allowed to speak at the memorial service.

Twenty-five years is a long time. Many of my classmates in graduate school, and for that matter many of the people in my ward, have no direct memory of September 11th. Their perspectives are those passed on by friends and family and our surrounding culture. Have we learned anything in those twenty-five years? Has that time improved our perspective?

In my graduate studies, I have focused on Mormon literature. And in my studies I have often wondered what perspective I should use to see not only that literature, but the rest of the world’s literature. One option is to somehow look at literature through my LDS identity. Should I privilege works simply because the author is LDS? Is there a perspective that comes from growing up and living as an LDS Church member that should control how I look at literature? At life? At the eternities?

One element of LDS worship that I rely on is the Temple. I think it’s vitally important because of the perspective it gives. The stories taught in the endowment put life on this earth in an eternal perspective. We are taken out of the every-day and asked to think about the world from God’s perspective. We are asked to evaluate what we do from the perspective of our relationship with our Heavenly Parents. We are taught there, I think, that the most important perspective we can take in this life is that of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If there is a universal perspective for how to look at literature, Mormon or not, or at the world and at life, I think that’s where I will find it. What will it mean to look at literature that way? I don’t completely know yet. I’m struggling enough with how to implement that perspective in my own workaday life. I have a lot to figure out still.

BUT, I am sure about some things about this perspective. I am sure that it involves seriously and thoroughly asking questions like “What Would Jesus Do”, and being able to back up the answers with logic, scripture and revelation. I am sure it would not involve hating immigrants and blaming whole groups of people for the actions of a few twenty five years ago. And I am sure it would not involve patriotism and the US flag.