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Chapter 1

THE BUTTERFLY IN BEIJING

Every once in a while, in a particular location and at a particular time, people spin the wheel of routine, and they make magic. One such location was Ebbets Field in the heart of Brooklyn, where, through World War I, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar struggles for equality in America, hardworking people enjoyed baseball. That small, unpredictable, and intimate ballpark was a gallery for characters to strut their stuff, and the characters in the stands took as much advantage of the opportunity as did the characters on the field. It was there that Jackie Robinson broke the color bar in Major League Baseball, and there that “Shorty’s Sym-Phony Band” tortured the opposition. Words like “raucous” and “zany” are invoked to help those of us who were never present imagine the intensity and the uniqueness of what went on.¹

In 1957, Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers, moved them to Los Angeles. The horror of that act is undiminished in the voices of fans. “I felt like a jilted lover,” recalls a sixty-year-old physician of the catastrophe that darkened his young life. Forty-six years after the Dodgers played their last game there, it remains important to people to tell the story of Ebbets Field, and in particular, to try to take us into its magic. This is the real essence of “nostalgia,” an emotion that is in one second bitter, and in another sweet, as the rememberer vacillates between the joy of what was and the grief of the loss. Enduring sorrow and untempered anger are hallmarks of the stories related by fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers. “I never rooted for them again,” says my doctor friend, and he is not alone in the implacable anger that still seems the only reasonable response to that kind of pain.

Three years after the Dodgers left, Ebbets Field was destroyed, and apartment buildings were erected on the site. People have to get the address and specific directions to find the small plaque that is all that remains of the cathedral of baseball which once stood there. And so the team is gone, the fans dispersed, the stadium demolished. Of deeper importance for people who had lots of work and not much hope, a place of magic was ripped from their daily lives, leaving them dull and gray. The loss of Ebbets Field was a tragedy that could not be repaired: it changed Brooklyn forever.

But how could the loss of a baseball stadium undermine what would be the fourth-largest city of the United States (were Brooklyn independent of the rest of New York City)?

The answer to this conundrum lies in understanding that places—buildings, neighborhoods, cities, nations—are not simply bricks and mortar that provide us shelter. Because we dance in a ballroom, have a parade in a street, make love in a bedroom, and prepare a feast in a kitchen, each of these places becomes imbued with sounds, smells, noises, and feelings of those moments and how we lived them. When we enter an old classroom, the smell of chalk on the boards can bring back a swarm of memories of classmates and lessons, boredom and dreams. Walking toward a favorite bar awakens expectations of friends and drinks, good times, good food. The breeze on a certain hillside reminds us of a class trip, while the sun in the garden brings thoughts of Dad. Try to find the shortcut you used to take to your best friend’s house and it is your feet that will carry you there. The cues from place dive under conscious thought and awaken our sinews and bones, where days of our lives have been recorded.

Buildings and neighborhoods and nations are insinuated into us by life; we are not, as we like to think, independent of them. We are more like Siamese twins, conjoined to the locations of our daily life, such that our emotions flow through places, just as blood flows through two interdependent people.² We can, indeed, separate from our places, but it is an operation that is best done with care. When a part is ripped away, as happened in Brooklyn when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, root shock ensues.

What Is Root Shock?

Root shock is the traumatic stress reaction to the destruction of all or part of one’s emotional ecosystem. It has important parallels to the physiological shock experienced by a person who, as a result of injury, suddenly loses massive amounts of fluids.³ Such a blow threatens the whole body’s ability to function. The nervous system attempts to compensate for the imbalance by cutting off circulation to the arms and legs. Suddenly the hands and feet will seem cold and damp, the face pale, and the brow sweaty. This is an emergency state that can preserve the brain, the heart, and the other essential organs for only a brief period of time. If the fluids are not restored, the person will die. Shock is the fight for survival after a life-threatening blow to the body’s internal balance.

Just as the body has a system to maintain its internal balance, so, too, the individual has a way to maintain the external balance between himself and the world. This way of moving in the environment maximizes the odds that he will survive predators, find food, maintain shelter from the harsh elements, and live in harmony with family and neighbors. This method for navigating the external environment is selected because, based on individual and collective trial-and-error experiences with the mazelike possibilities offered by the surrounding world, it seems to offer the greatest chances for survival. Using this analogy to mazes we can call the chosen pattern of movement “a way to run the maze of life,” or, more simply, a “mazeway.”⁴

When the mazeway, the external system of protection, is damaged, the person will go into root shock.⁵ Just as a burn victim requires immediate replacement of fluids, so, too, the victim of root shock requires the support and direction of emergency workers who can erect shelter, provide food, and ensure safety until the victim has stabilized and can begin to take over these functions again.

Imagine the victim of an earthquake, a hurricane, a flood, or a terrorist attack. He suffers from root shock as he looks at the twisted remains of the known universe, searching for the road to the supermarket, which used to be there, but is now a pile of rubble. Imagining such a person—and knowing that these tragedies can happen to any of us—we open our hearts and wallets to the Red Cross and other relief organizations that show up immediately to be the temporary mazeway, the transfusion of an environment to those who are naked to the elements.

The experience of root shock—like the aftermath of a severe burn—does not end with emergency treatment, but will stay with the individual for a lifetime. In fact, the injury from root shock may be even more enduring than a burn, as it can affect generations and generations of people. Noah’s ark—and his effort to rebuild the world after the flood—is the true story of a lost world. We keep telling that story because we keep living it, not simply when the floods come, but after they have receded and we try to rebuild.

Carlos Peterson, a resident of the Lower Hill, was deeply affected by the bulldozing of his neighborhood. He related, “I remember being able to look from the third floor and actually see the bulldozers and the destruction of where we once lived. This urban renewal process was preparation for Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena. I was young and did not fully understand what was happening. I only knew this process was coming towards us. Coupled with the sense of personal loss of friends and neighborhood, this event had quite an influence on my life.” As an adult, he gained a deeper understanding of the process that continued to destroy the neighborhood. It was with a sense of increasing urgency that he sought to document what was happening around him. The photograph shown here depicts the bulldozing in the area of Crawford Street, with the dome of the Civic Arena in the background, and exposed tree roots in the foreground. The disrupted context, exterior to the individual and the group, is the fundamental process that engenders root shock.

Fig. 1.1. Carlos F. Peterson. “Hill-o-Phobia.” Carlos Peterson took this photograph after the bulldozing of a section of the Lower Hill. It shows the Civic Arena just behind the tree root. It is an image of the world torn apart that we will revisit in the work of other artists. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Carlos Peterson worked, as well, to depict the emotional impact the environmental devastation had on him. “I decided to express my feeling using drawings and photography. . . . I decided to look at my surroundings from a grassroots level, with the perspective of knowing how such conditions made me feel. My impression was that we were like a bunch of nomads always fleeing, that was the feeling I had.

“When creating my drawings I attempted to look at a building from within, and the structure’s exterior. I would go into a vacant structure and photograph how it was, allowing memories of my experience to influence art. I would seek to tie in my impressions of what it would feel like had I been the last resident. Therefore, I would end up with a lot of stretched and distorted images that I thought reflected the economics in a downtrodden neighborhood.”

In “Stream of Consciousness,” the drawing shown here, the isolated buildings, open grave, and looming cross create a landscape of loss. The artist has placed his profile among the doomed buildings on the horizon. A dressmaker’s model and a fallen stop sign are poignant reminders that this world once worked and moved and meant something to the people who lived in it. Thus, Carlos Peterson attempts to reveal the texture and content of the painful emotions that accompany root shock.

“This drawing contains symbolism that characterized my state of mind during the time when the Hill District was at its lowest ebb. My drawings were my therapy through the smothering depression that came with the area’s carcass-like landscape. During that time I saw contradiction between religion and nature. Man-made structures and man always succumb to nature no matter how strong man’s faith, prayer, or objects. . . . Nature renews itself through death and dying. With this realization, I included my profile near the horizon just beyond the fence, upper right.”

Root shock, at the level of the individual, is a profound emotional upheaval that destroys the working model of the world that had existed in the individual’s head.⁶ Root shock undermines trust, increases anxiety about letting loved ones out of one’s sight, destabilizes relationships, destroys social, emotional, and financial resources, and increases the risk for every kind of stress-related disease, from depression to heart attack. Root shock leaves people chronically cranky, barking a distinctive croaky complaint that their world was abruptly taken away.

Root shock, at the level of the local community, be it neighborhood or something else, ruptures bonds, dispersing people to all the directions of the compass.⁷ Even if they manage to regroup, they are not sure what to do with one another. People who were near are too far, and people who were far are too near. The elegance of the neighborhood—each person in his social and geographic slot—is destroyed, and even if the neighborhood is rebuilt exactly as it was, it won’t work. The restored geography is not enough to repair the many injuries to the mazeway.⁸

Fig. 1.2. Carlos F. Peterson. “Stream of Consciousness.” In this drawing, Carlos Peterson included a series of images of loss and confusion, as he tried to make sense of the disintegration of the world around him. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.

Root shock, it is important to recognize, ripples out beyond those who are affected—in the way we like to measure these things. September 11 demonstrated our society’s great love for distinguishing an “affected” group that needs help from an “unaffected” group that doesn’t. While the “affected” people did need help, many more people were affected than was generally conceded. I was part of a call-in television show that aired just before the first anniversary of the attack. People from Queens or Staten Island called to say, “I feel bad, but nothing happened to me. It’s making me feel guilty.” I insisted, over and over again, that September 11 had happened to all of us and that the bad feeling was a natural reaction to having one’s city attacked by terrorists.

But root shock goes even further than one city, linking a local tragedy to events around the globe. During the 1950s and ’60s, a federal program called “urban renewal” destroyed hundreds of African American neighborhoods, many of which were home to jazz, a music that flowed through the communities from home to street to club. The young kids learning to play would linger outside the clubs to hear the music, dreaming of the day they might participate. Major chunks of the jazz world—the Fillmore in San Francisco, the Hill District in Pittsburgh, and the South Side of Chicago, among them—were torn up by urban renewal, and the structure of home-street-club was destroyed. Jazz nearly disappeared in the United States, surviving by dint of becoming an academic subject in high schools and colleges, played in a few austere clubs in New York and other big cities. The fact that the music endured had much to do with Europe and Japan, which offered performance sites where musicians might hone their craft and earn a living. Japan is now the top consumer of jazz CDs and Tokyo a “must stop” on a jazz ensemble’s touring schedule.

Tobias von Shöenebeck, a tour guide in Berlin, applied this principle of ripple effects on August 3, 2003, while watching fellow citizens participate in a new fad called “flash mob,” which had apparently originated in New York two months earlier. At the Berlin event, the flash mob, called together by email and cell phone, gathered in front of the American embassy to pop bottles of champagne, toast Natasha, and disperse. Von Shöenebeck shook his head, and muttered, “This is just the sort of thing that happens when you forbid New York to smoke.”⁹ He was referring to the implementation in April 2003 of tough new laws outlawing smoking in New York City bars and restaurants. While few might have made the connection between New York’s smoking laws and the fads that catch on in Berlin, it is exactly the kind of idea to which I am referring.

This lesson of interconnectedness is as hard to learn as differential calculus or quantum mechanics. The principle is simple: we—that is to say, all people—live in an emotional ecosystem that attaches us to the environment, not just as our individual selves, but as beings caught in a single, universal net of consciousness anchored in small niches we call neighborhoods or hamlets or villages. Because of the interconnectedness of the net, if your place is destroyed today, I will feel it hereafter.

Though a simple principle, it is hard to learn because the effects of root shock immediately get caught up in everything else that’s going on in the world. As the message moves around the world, it is possible to think of many other explanations for an initial cause. Imagine how many factors, other than New York City’s smoking laws, helped create the Berlin flash mob. The idea that your hurt has an effect on my life requires us to believe in “action at a distance,” which makes the average scientist go rigid with skepticism.

The emergence of theories of complex systems, chaos theory among others, has helped us. We now understand the seemingly impossible proposition that the flapping wings of a butterfly in Beijing could affect the weather in New York.¹⁰ It is from that perspective that we must view the ecosystem of emotions. Root shock rips emotional connections in one part of the globe, and sets in motion small changes—jazz musicians in search of a venue, smokers acting out their annoyance—that spread out across the world, shifting the direction of all interpersonal connections. Imagine it as a version of six degrees of separation, the idea that each American is only six handshakes away from the president of the United States. We are each of us only thirteen handshakes away from anyone’s root shock—not much distance in a global world.

Where Are People Rooted?

Though I have already argued that people go into shock if uprooted, it is useful to consider: Where are people rooted? Before people moved to cities, this was a fairly straightforward question. They were rooted where they lived, and they lived where their fathers, and their fathers’ fathers, had lived. Of course, this is more complicated than it seems, as armies swept back and forth across the continents, trade routes linked distant lands, tribes exhausted their lands and had to move to new pastures, and adventurers wandered the world. Yet for a long time in human history, people lived for generations in small places—a few miles in diameter—and that is where they were rooted.

Things got complicated when people started to move to cities. After all, cities are much more unstable—people will leave a neighborhood within months or years, rather than decades or centuries, and they live with a fairly high level of anonymity. A few will live in stable neighborhoods, like the urban villagers who inhabited Boston’s West End before it was destroyed by urban renewal.¹¹ But most live in a city neighborhood much looser and less secure. So where are they rooted?

The renowned urbanist Jane Jacobs had a profound insight into this puzzle. She identified the way in which people made the mazeway in the urban setting, what she called the “sidewalk ballet.” In one of the passages fundamental to our current understanding of rootedness, she wrote:

The stretch of Hudson Street where I live is each day the scene of an intricate sidewalk ballet. I make my own entrance into it a little after eight when I put out the garbage can, surely a prosaic occupation, but I enjoy my part, my little clang, as the droves of junior high school students walk by the center of the stage dropping candy wrappers. (How do they eat so much candy so early in the morning?)

While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other rituals of morning: Mr. Halpert unlocking the laundry’s handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia’s son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair, Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils of wire which proclaim the hardware store is open, the wife of the tenement’s superintendent depositing her chunky three-year-old with a toy mandolin on the stoop, the vantage point from which he is learning the English his mother cannot speak . . . It is time for me to hurry to work too, and I exchange my ritual farewell with Mr. Lofaro, the short, thick-bodied, white-aproned fruit man who stands outside his doorway a little up the street, his arms folded, his feet planted, looking solid as earth itself. We nod; we each glance quickly up and down the street, then look back to each other and smile. We have done this many a morning for more than ten years, and we both know what it means: All is well.¹²

The street, bordered by buildings, is the stage of the local world, Jacobs proposes to us, as she describes her entry onto the “scene.” She recounts the interactions she experiences daily, informing us through her interchange with Mr. Lofaro that she is part of this little spot and she knows its rules. “All is well,” she writes, letting us know how content she is to be a part of this small theater piece. This construction of theater and actors, all knowing their parts and performing them well, is what makes up the street ballet. It is another way of describing our ability to master and run the maze of life, the mazeway, the near environment within which we find food, shelter, safety, and companionship. We love the mazeway in which we are rooted, for it is not simply the buildings that make us safe and secure, but, more complexly, our knowledge of the “scene” that makes us so. We all have our little part to play, carefully synchronized with that of all the other players: we are rooted in that, our piece of the world-as-stage.

Try the following thought experiments.

First, imagine Jane Jacobs’s street altered in any way you like—change the size of the buildings and their use; reorganize the street—move the subway entrance, relocate the school—and then imagine people making use of it. If you look closely, a sidewalk ballet, albeit different from Jacobs’s version, will emerge before your eyes. In this thought experiment, you are observing the degree to which people can adapt to different settings, and not just adapt, but attach, connect. They are connecting not to the negatives or even the positives of the setting, but to their own mastery of the local players and their play.

Second, take any setting, and reduce it to shreds. The fundamental geographic points cuing the ballet are now gone. Center stage has disappeared. Jacobs’s entry is gone, and so are the stores and the stoop that made possible the three-year-old’s English lessons. For a long moment, the actors will be frozen in horror. As the horror recedes, confusion will set in. Where is food? Where is shelter? Should I still go to school? What you have just imagined is root shock, the traumatic stress from the loss of a person’s stage set, lifeworld, mazeway, home.

Just as Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, uprooted his team without regard for Brooklyn, so too other entrepreneurs of that era reorganized the landscape so that they could make more money. The tool that they used was urban renewal, a program of the federal government that provided money for cities to clear “blight.”¹³ Blight, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and it happened, more often than not, that the part of the city the businessmen thought was blighted was the part where black people lived.

By my estimate, 1,600 black neighborhoods were demolished by urban renewal.¹⁴ This massive destruction caused root shock on two levels. First, residents of each neighborhood experienced the traumatic stress of the loss of their life world. Second, because of the interconnections among all black people in the United States, the whole of Black America experienced root shock as well. Root shock, post urban renewal, disabled powerful mechanisms of community functioning, leaving the black world at an enormous disadvantage for meeting the challenges of globalization.

Urban renewal is the butterfly in Beijing, the unseen actor who caused the tempest. The vigor of the civil rights movement led to the expectation that black Americans would be better off when segregation was defeated. In fact, by 1970, some were but many were not. Instead, the have-nots had tumbled deeper into poverty and dysfunction. The great epidemics of drug addiction, the collapse of the black family, and the rise in incarceration of black men—all of these catastrophes followed the civil rights movements, they did not precede it. Though there are a number of causes of this dysfunction that cannot be disputed—the loss of manufacturing jobs, in particular—the current situation of Black America cannot be understood without a full and complete accounting of the social, economic, cultural, political, and emotional losses that followed the bulldozing of 1,600 neighborhoods.

But we cannot understand the losses unless we first appreciate what was there.