You Must Remember This
This is a bit of a dated issue, but it struck me as interesting. When Osama bin Laden was killed last month, journalists were interviewing all kinds of people for reactions, and it seemed like many twentysomethings felt more emotional about the event than people our age. When it happened I was surprised and relieved, but I knew his death wouldn’t mean the end of the war—it had a strange anti-climactic feeling to it.
What I kept hearing and reading was that people who were kids or teens when 9/11 happened really had their worldview shaped by that event. It seemed like 9/11 was a dividing line between their childhood years and the intrusion of a harsher world. We were 21 and already out of college, so I feel like maybe the impact was different for us.
Then I started to think about the 90s, when we grew up, and what the seminal events were that changed the way I thought about the world. Maybe this is weird to admit, but what I remember most wasn’t the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union or even the Gulf War, but the televised show trials. I remember people racing home to watch the O.J. Simpson trial, and how the bookstore I worked at sold paperback copies of the Starr Report. Hilariously, I think I also remember the impeachment trials because we had our own mini version at Goucher (when they tried to impeach Ridg Mills from student government). Ah, good times!
I’m curious to know how you guys (and your younger friends) reacted to bin Laden’s death. And what were the big national or world events that made a difference when you were young?
3 comments:
It also might be a maturity thing. We're in our early thirties now, and can logically see that there's no way killing one person means anything. But for someone who was a kid when this happened, they're maybe in college now or so, and maybe to them the world still is more black-and-white than it is for us.
You also need to remember that we're jaded intellectuals who have lost faith in the government. :) Maybe adults with simpler mindsets feel differently about this than we do.
I like your characterization of us as jaded intellectuals! Makes me think we should be sitting around in leather chairs in some book-lined library, discussing world events with French politico-philosophers.
It's kind of funny that we (or generation X) are considered "jaded," since we grew up in such a relatively peaceful time for the U.S. (Gulf War and Cold War aside).
Shouldn't we be the optimistic ones? Or maybe the constant political scandals and conspiracy theories have taken their toll on us.
There was a book I always wanted to read about how Kurt Cobain and the kids who grew up listening to him were the first generation that was really savvy about the strategies marketers and advertisers used to sell things to young people. Maybe it's just growing up with that sense that very little in the world is genuine, that everyone is trying to sell you something.
Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud at this point and wondering what you guys think ...
I think there are many good points being thrown around here. I agree with you, Audrey that I was less than impressed when Bin Laden was killed. In many ways he was dead to me already and like his minions go at length to tell us, we are still living with the fear that he has created.
Regarding whether we have more perspective, I think this is true as well. I am a native New Yorker and 9-11 hit me harder than I have ever cared to share. However, I remember the FIRST World Trade Center Bombing in 1993 and feeling very unsettled as a 14 year old, that someone could drive a van full of explosives into such a place.
Since we lived in such a relatively peaceful time, I think people our age have to roll back the clock further to find events that were as significant. I always think about the Challenger Explosion as the major event of my youth, whereas people a little older think about when Reagan was shot. I don't discount people's intense feelings about Bin Laden, but I do take the more hardened opinion of what is done is done and we will not get it back for a very long time.
As for the last comments about the irony behind the fact our generation is "Jaded," I think we are the victims of a strange phenomenon. Having lived in the first relatively peaceful decade (from a US perspective) since the 1950's, we were the first generation that didn't have something tangible to be angry at where we can divert our attention. There was no Vietnam to blame for our troubles, no Soviet Union, which only left people with the society around us to aim our angst. I believe that combining all this undirected energy with the resources provided through the information boom has created savvier generation in general.
I think in some ways it must be harder for today's generation to deal with big events such as Bin Laden's death because of all of the information they have to process. Not only do they lack the perspective that comes with time, but they have to sift through tons of opinions and perspective provided through TV, blogs, Twitter and the rest of the worldwide media. Back in "our day" something would happen, you would watch it on TV and mostly take the news anchor's word for it. You may not have had all of the information at your disposal, but you certainly had the breathing room to think about it in a more deliberate manner.
Anyway, that is my 2 cents...
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