What changed everything?
Five years ago, four planes were hijacked and crashed and three buildings were damaged and destroyed and upwards of 3000 people died. It was a big event. It has been said often this week that “911 changed everything.”
But did that event change everything, or was it our responses to that event that changed everything? If the first is true, then I believe we have already lost the “war on terror”, for if all it takes is for these acts to be committed and everything changes, then the power rests with those who commit the acts.
But if the responsibility for world-changing rests with us individually and collectively, then we are confronted with the thought that we must bear some responsibility for how the world has changed, and know that it is entirely within our capabilities to change it again.
What do you think?
[tags]911[/tags]
9/11 changed alot of things. It changed the fundimentals of activism. It changed the tactics of freedom fighters. It changed how wars are fought. It changed how Rights & Freedoms are thrown out the window. It changed the media. It changed power control of countries. It changed how many people precieve anything it fears or does not understand. It changed mainsteam culture. (Kind of how the USSR changed TV shows. Alot of mainsteam TV shows had anti-communsitic and anti-USSR message with Russians being the poster-boy for that message. But now it has Muslims and Arabs as the current message of pro-fear.)
Terrorism is a intersting words. Linguists of the world change the meaning of words as times go on. For different objectives of course. But the world has changed, our at least our world. What “world” is and “reality” is of the beholder. In some places in the world, 9/11 changed very little, but in our minds, it’s changed alot.
Then we look at the properganda behind this war on terror. Howcome on March 20th, we don’t mourne or remember the near 300’000 people who have died in Iraq. Why don’t we “Support the Insurgents” campigns, even though some of them are fighting for their freedom. And this doesn’t even pertain to Iraq. Israel, Afghanastan, Africa, and here in Canada, or the US.
Change, humor and paradox. Change is a law, and is constant. It’s heard, told and sang through-out my peoples history and teachings. But I’ve always believed in that we have the power to how that change happens. Some more liberal “aboriginals” believe similar to me, but that we should become law abiding, capitalistic venture seeking, consummerist driven culture, that “adapted” our ancient civilization to this “new modern” culture. What if I say different. What we if we say differently. What if we choose not to follow that way, and become a strong force that completly changes the system. “You cannot take down the masters house with the masters tools.” And if we are to remain slaves to colonial and settler influences, we have truly lost. Some major battle have been lost, but the war isn’t over. There is no great war, no great depression. The great war is our lives, the great depresion is spirituality.
I’m going all over the place here, but maybe in my odd indigenous rhetoric, you might understand what I’m getting at.
Change happens. But it happens howe choose it to. There are no victims, everyone has a choice.
Living as a German national in a small village 40 Kilometers south of Prague in the Czech Republic 9/11 was, well, not SUCH a big thing. More people die in car accidents in Germany every year, I think.
But did the German declare war on speeding cars or some such?
So, no, 9/11 didn’t change anything but the response did. The media’s response, that is. And then us who participated in the media’s reception.
And I was sitting in front of TV (then in Berlin) crying as I saw people fly and towers crash.
Trying to understand the impact 9/11 had on Americans and american policy which then effects all of us here as well – maybe for the first time they have learnt for the first time how it is to be victim of what I think are rightly called terrorists, because they want to strike terror in the heart of as many people as possible; people not believing in their particular kind of divinity.
How to fight terror effectively? By making the poor much richer; they’ll have something to loose then, and thus might not be the suicide-troopers for some ‘divine cause’.
Really, my heart goes out to all those who have lost a dear one in the attack on the twin towers, and are now forced to face it again…
Much Love,
Mushin
I agree with Mushin that it was largely a media-driven change.
I don’t live in the US, so it’s hard to comment on how most Americans feel about it because all I really have to go on are the sentimental puff pieces that the media like to put out. But, I’d guess that there are a lot of people who were affected and a lot of people who really weren’t. I imagine that if you live in New York City, you’re a lot more affected by it than if you live in rural Arkansas. But then there’ll be layers beneath that. Some people will feel more emotional about it than others in both places.
It was an attack on the US. It told the US that they still had enemies out there that wanted to hurt them, and the the Cold War wasn’t the end of that particular fact. It put the Middle East on the map for a lot of people, I think, even if it wrongly put most of the attention on Iraq in particular. It defined a contemporary enemy. If you buy the “support the president during wartime” line, then it also kept Bush in power in 2004.
I think it also made terrorist attacks more relevant to the US. Terrorist attacks in some far-off place get more attention now than they did, because most people in the US now know what it’s like to be the victim of a strong terrorist attack.
But, the thread that ties all of this together is that most people will get the different slants on these aspects from the media. There’s nowhere else to get the information from! None of these things are particularly “firsts”, but they’re “firsts” in the time that we’re in now, with so many different means of rapid communication available to us.
I think it’s hard to separate the attack from the response. There’s another dimension of pre-conditioning involved. The population is pre-conditioned to have a certain response involved, and I’m not sure you can challenge people to have a different response after years of being conditioned to see things in a certain way. I’m not suggesting that manipulation is involved, but just that we live in a relatively safe place, and aren’t accustomed to these types of attacks. It’s hard to demand a different response from the population under those circumstances, and I don’t think you’d be able to convince the masses, anyway. So, I’m not sure what the question really does for us. But, leadership certainly has a responsibility to carefully consider their response.
Anyway, I seem to have gone all over the map. Just some thoughts… 🙂
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article What changed everything?, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.