As I sat on the couch in my living room on September 11th 2001, and watched the second plane fly into the World Trade Center building, I was struck by a profound sense of wrongness. This sense only continued to grow as I watched in the following days, as Arabs all over the world cheer at the death of three thousand humans. How, I wondered could people be so uneducated as to believe that America was this giant monster that needed to be destroyed? Two years later as I began to work on this essay for my University of Washington English class, I remembered this puzzling feeling. How I wondered once again, could people be so stubborn as to refuse to see the truth behind their beliefs and actions and why when presented even with the facts would people turn away? I remembered then, in Patricia Limerick's essay " The Empire of Innocence", Limerick had claimed "humans live in a world in which mental reality does not have to submit to narrow tests of accuracy"(417). It seems to me that we (humans) adopt mental realities and are shocked when those preconceived notions don't conform to reality. Most often, and even more surprising though, we blame "reality". We seem to do this because the other option of considering the other side would rock our fundamental beliefs so much, that we fear that we will never be able to return to what we once had. It is easier to follow in the direction of a well worn path, than to try and make a new one. .
Throughout history, people have always been prone to create their own mental realities, preconceived notions and concepts that they expect the world to follow. As Limerick discusses people of the Old West, she explains that these people were often frustrated by trying episodes in their lives, because they felt they were undeserved since their motives were innocent. She says "Squatters defied the boundaries of Indian territory and then were aggrieved to find themselves harassed and attacked by Indians.
