the WTC question

this question came into my head earlier today
when i read 1quickSI's post on the 9/11
remembrance thread in the main admin board
(if you haven't read it... click here)

his quote is as follows:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 1quickSI:
2 years latter and the effects of this tradgety are still felt around the world and remain unforgotten as it should be for all of eternity.

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<font size="4" face="Tempus Sans ITC, Tahoma">this got me thinking about the current
issue surrounding the jewish holocaust
and the attempt to preserve the 'memory'
of the holocaust of WWII.

naturally this question came AFTER my
recent viewing of the 9/11 attacks... so
i'm already a bit skewed in my thinking... (sorry)


as sad as it is... this (WTC) tragedy will
only have a profound impact on those that
were capable of legitimately and cognitavely
experiencing it (though there is no doubt
the ramifications of the events of 9/11
will echo for a few).

it is safe to assume that, like the jewish
holocaust... there will come a day when
the events of 9/11 will only be seen by
'new' eyes... and those that experienced
9/11, like the holocaust, will slowly
dwindle.

while there is NO DOUBT the events of 9/11
will be established in every history book...
not to mention an official US holiday
(i'm surprised this hasn't happened yet...
but maybe its due to labor day)

... there will come a time when 9/11 won't mean much....

eventually the remembrances will dwindle
and occassionally will pop up, more or less
depending on where you live, and the whole
event will be nothing more than text and images....
no real feeling any more.... (kinda like
when we read about columbus and his stuff...
sure its exciting... but not as much as it
was back in the day)

taking into consideration that we are
of the generation to experience it....

how does this affect you now?

i might sound ignorant or what not but 9/11 only affected me the first day it happened, and then it didnt even mean to much. maybe b/c i really dont know anyone it affected or it didnt even affect me personally. i rarely ever think about it and when i do its b/c ive heard some thing on the news or whatever.

i hold a similar view to slave im not being ignorant and i dont hold the remembrance againts those that were/are affected by it but for me personally i watched the after affects the day it happened and since then i remember it when its on the news in the paper on the radio which ever but day to day it doesnt affect me.

With me it was the shock of seeing the images..hearing the phonecalls saying goodbye to loved ones..hearing the clips of people screaming and watching them jump out of the buildings..those are images i wont soon forget..i didnt know anyone personally..it didnt truly affect me in any way other than my soft hearted feelings..and i feel the same way about the bali bombing..the war in iraq..israel...images are what i see..and i see everything with my heart..and feel it deeply..i get aggravated with all the hype with 9/11..the commercialism of it all...the people who are trying to benfit from it...in the end..it was a horrible day..lives were lost..but it was no less devastating than any other countries loss of life...look at the monrovia situation..liberia..they have lost more people than even they can count..look at iraq..saddam and co killed so many...yet they arent dwelling on it now...life it to be lived..we will all die someday...if we live it to its fullest..remember to say i love you more often..enjoy the small things in life..how can we have any regrets if we die tommorrow..and 9/11 proved it can happen to any of us..TG will be proud of me...think of the words to garth brooks "big" hit....So tell that someone that you love
Just what you're thinking of
If tomorrow never comes [img]cool.gif[/img]

It only effects me because I have the 'put yourself in their shoes' way of looking at things. I was watching a little documentary on September 11th thing last night on TV, and almost everytime I saw the images of the planes crashing, and people jumping, I cried.

And what was being said, I think in a different thread, about how we don't have the same amount of sympathy for other tragic events - that is the complete opposite for me.
Perhaps I'm just very emotional, but still..

My Mum had an... experience (?), where I later found was coming very close to being fatal. That was an highly emotional time. The pain I felt, when I found out months after the experience how close she had come, was incredible.
So when I think of any event that has been fatal to a person - or an event like Spetember 11th - it gets me very sympathetic and emotional, no matter whether it had no connection to my personal life.

It will be much like Pearl Harbor is to most everyone of our generation.

Most of us didnt ever give much thought to it until Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett landed starring roles in the movie.

Hmmm....I guess what I'm saying is that it will lose the "shock and awe" value.

Kids will grow up hearing about it but not really understanding how the world literally stopped that day. Just as I can not fully understand what it would have felt like to live in the US in the cold war....the future generations (for the most part) simply will not care.

However, look for for the motion picture blockbuster of the summner, "747 Squared Equals Boom" in mid 2033.

And ya know...Im not sure that it really bothers me at all. It's just how things happen.

I will try to relate it to sports....
people are only really concerned with what is happening modern day. No one looks back these days and says "Man, that Babe Ruth. He was really something." You will only hear him brought up when a modern day athlete may break his records. This isnt saying that people dont respect what he did or think that he must have been pretty good...it's just that most people simply dont care. They didnt see him, why should they?

It's kinda like that saying, "Having been there makes all the difference".

I wasnt around for the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombings and when I hear them mentioned, I dont think much of it. I've seen pictures of the effects of those bombs and read many accounts of it. (Many I believe because there was a topic about it on this very board). But even then, it doesnt really hit home with me. I cannot fully grasp the situation because its a different time now.

With all that said (basically a repeat of my first post...sorry), it doesnt bother me at all that people will not fully grasp what happened on September 11.

I find your Columbus reference a pretty good one. Or even the moon landings.....
In both of these instances, man discovered a whole new world out there (yeah yeah, vikings and natives had been there before columbo...big deal [img]tongue.gif[/img] .....one of them even happened just over 30 years ago! But does it really affect me? Nope.

I can read about it and think to myself "Hey, thats pretty neat." but I cant really understand what it must have felt like back then to be a part of something such as those events.

Hmmm...I'll try to wrap this up....

If anyone cries out that its a shame for WTC not to be remembered in such a dramatic fashion every year....or that the new generations simply must recognize what a huge event it was...I would hope that they too recoginize so many of the other atrocities that have happened in this world years ago. If not, who are they to point fingers at any future generations?

I have to listen to crackpot conspiracy theories all the time. That's the affect it's had on me.

I agree with shatz and tg, it will become another chapter in a history book for kids who never experenced or witnessed the tragedy. It will never mean as much to them as it ment to us because it was never tangable for them. Although we might not think of it very often, if anything is mentioned about 9/11 or the WTC we know what it looked like, we witnessed people running for their lives and listened to stories of lost loved ones. That's an experience your not going to get from reading a textbook.

we have the internet now! [img]biggrin.gif[/img]

which is somewhat bittersweet.... as i know that
300 years from now, if a kid wanted to see some
footage... they could

*curses 24th century kids*