Posted 9/11/2014 8:46 PM (GMT 0)
Here goes one of my periodic observations.
Yesterday, while in a middle school classroom, i started chatting with the kids and 9-11 came up. I asked, "Were you guys even born then?" They were, but only just. Most were infants, or at most a few months old.
So, everything they know about the event is reflected through the media's coverage of a piece of history.
It is the same with all of us, really. What can we know, in 2014, about Lincoln's assassination in 1865? I was born in 1968, and all I know of Kennedy's assassination is accounts I have watched, heard, or read. You know, collective memory is a great concept, in theory. All will be remembered. ALL. But, not in the same way, as our culture modifies the event.
I had a history seminar the evening of 9-11-2001. We talked about the different points of view of events that we all have, both living events and those past. The experience of a survivor from the Pentagon is different from that of a NYC denizen. My experience, being on the border of DC that day, is different that the memory of someone in California.
Those who were 'adult' at that time can remember the fresh horror and the fear, and the spasms of anxiety that went through our towns in the following few weeks. We remember being glued to televisions, and wanting to reach out, either to help, heal, or hurt, depending on the perspective. The children of 2011 only remember fear, transferred by their parents, fear about something they didn't understand.
Now, our children only understand the event through the honor we give it, as an unremembered moment in time which formed their world of terrorists, anxiety, electronic fears, and the armed services their family members join.
As the world grows daily more precarious and dangerous with Ukraine, Gaza, ISIS, and dangerous viruses wending their way through West Africa as well as the American heartland, those who have experienced terror on the large scale perspective of a skyscraper smoking, burning, and collapsing, watch waiting for the next fear. I worry, often, for the future of our world. But, so far, the Earth has managed to move on.