The World’s Transcendent Home
The Times has put out the call for a better new slogan than “The World’s Second Home,” the catchphrase currently being used to sway the Olympic Committee to New York. The main problem is that it doesn’t relate to the eight million people who actually live here. Second Home? Right, and my other car is a Cadillac.
However, there are a couple of things about it that do work for me. I appreciate the economy of words—even if Big Apple and Helluva Town nailed something about New York even more succinctly.
What doesn’t work is the word “second.” It just plain doesn’t fit here, unless used to convey time, preferably speed—but then we already have “in a New York minute,” which, I recall Johnny Carson once defined as the amount of time it takes in New York for the car behind you to honk after the light turns green.
“World” is a good fit. Just how worldly is New York? Along with London, New York received the highest ranking of world cities in a study by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network. The study ranked world cities using criteria such as “first-name familiarity”—no one says of a world city, where’s that?—international influence, global participation, and so forth. After New York and London, the next ranked world cities were Chicago, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Milan, Los Angeles, and Singapore. In all, 55 world cities were listed.
“Home” also fits. Home is about security beyond mere shelter and comes close to the essential of what any city should strive for. Home is where ever the internal city’s compass points: where you hope to find, or make for yourself, friends and family, a roof and plumbing, sidewalks and wifi, a stranger to help out or to exchange pleasantries about the weather. One of a city’s promises is to deliver on our dreams associated with our inalienable rights that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Life leads the list in this nation’s founding document, but, unlike the others, is rarely cited as the source of American dreams. Nevertheless, each of us has to belong somewhere—life just isn’t possible without taking up space. Home is a state of mind with a place on the map.
This takes me to seeking out a new modifer for “the world’s home,” something that holds up to the kind of home the world has in New York. So, how about “The World’s Transcendent Home?”
Subtract points for its lack of the common touch; transcendent is not like the word “big” in big apple, it needs dictionary support. According to the American Heritage, transcendent has several meanings. Two involve concepts about “the unknowable” and “being” which I’ll pass on. Another meaning is “preeminant or supreme.” But the fact that New York is only almost preeminant among the world’s cities, based on its tied ranking with London, doesn’t lend itself well to that meaning. Finally, transcendent means “lying above the ordinary range of perception.” Here I find an appealing truth about New York.
The idea of New York as transcendent was engraved in the world’s memory most profoundly by the attack of 9/11. God knows how many hidieous acts of war were perputated on the world’s cities throughout history. Even the 9/11 attack on Washington came from the ordinary perceptions of extremists with hostile ideas about US imperialism. But why attack the people in the Twin Towers? Certainly, as a symbol of global trade, but also as something else. The Twin Towers belonged to a city where 38 percent were foreign born and 140 languages were spoken on its sidewalks—we know this from the 2000 Census. Bin Laden hit the New York skyline as a sneering pronouncement to take nothing for granted anymore.
And yet, since the attack, New York has proved itself to be truly far above the ordinary. It remains a city friendly to the world, arms wide open, especially to the immigrant on the first step to a new way of life. As if to say, welcome to New York—the world’s transcendent home.
However, there are a couple of things about it that do work for me. I appreciate the economy of words—even if Big Apple and Helluva Town nailed something about New York even more succinctly.
What doesn’t work is the word “second.” It just plain doesn’t fit here, unless used to convey time, preferably speed—but then we already have “in a New York minute,” which, I recall Johnny Carson once defined as the amount of time it takes in New York for the car behind you to honk after the light turns green.
“World” is a good fit. Just how worldly is New York? Along with London, New York received the highest ranking of world cities in a study by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network. The study ranked world cities using criteria such as “first-name familiarity”—no one says of a world city, where’s that?—international influence, global participation, and so forth. After New York and London, the next ranked world cities were Chicago, Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Milan, Los Angeles, and Singapore. In all, 55 world cities were listed.
“Home” also fits. Home is about security beyond mere shelter and comes close to the essential of what any city should strive for. Home is where ever the internal city’s compass points: where you hope to find, or make for yourself, friends and family, a roof and plumbing, sidewalks and wifi, a stranger to help out or to exchange pleasantries about the weather. One of a city’s promises is to deliver on our dreams associated with our inalienable rights that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Life leads the list in this nation’s founding document, but, unlike the others, is rarely cited as the source of American dreams. Nevertheless, each of us has to belong somewhere—life just isn’t possible without taking up space. Home is a state of mind with a place on the map.
This takes me to seeking out a new modifer for “the world’s home,” something that holds up to the kind of home the world has in New York. So, how about “The World’s Transcendent Home?”
Subtract points for its lack of the common touch; transcendent is not like the word “big” in big apple, it needs dictionary support. According to the American Heritage, transcendent has several meanings. Two involve concepts about “the unknowable” and “being” which I’ll pass on. Another meaning is “preeminant or supreme.” But the fact that New York is only almost preeminant among the world’s cities, based on its tied ranking with London, doesn’t lend itself well to that meaning. Finally, transcendent means “lying above the ordinary range of perception.” Here I find an appealing truth about New York.
The idea of New York as transcendent was engraved in the world’s memory most profoundly by the attack of 9/11. God knows how many hidieous acts of war were perputated on the world’s cities throughout history. Even the 9/11 attack on Washington came from the ordinary perceptions of extremists with hostile ideas about US imperialism. But why attack the people in the Twin Towers? Certainly, as a symbol of global trade, but also as something else. The Twin Towers belonged to a city where 38 percent were foreign born and 140 languages were spoken on its sidewalks—we know this from the 2000 Census. Bin Laden hit the New York skyline as a sneering pronouncement to take nothing for granted anymore.
And yet, since the attack, New York has proved itself to be truly far above the ordinary. It remains a city friendly to the world, arms wide open, especially to the immigrant on the first step to a new way of life. As if to say, welcome to New York—the world’s transcendent home.
posted by Paul Cogley at 5:08 PM
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