Are we sure that "Never Forget" is healthy?

[xiphias]

Okay, "Never Again" is a reasonable idea -- let's all learn from history and make sure that people don't make racist assumptions about entire groups of people and oppress them. Of course, we don't actually DO that.

But "Never Forget"? Okay, if that means "have appropriate memorials to respect and honor the dead," sure, that's fine. But it appears to mean "constantly relive the horror of it" -- which seems to be cultural PTSD.

I'm really ready to forget. Remember that it happened, take lessons from it. But it's been fourteen years. Kids who weren't born yet are now in high school. It's time to forget.

Comments

[otherdeb.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You have really hit the nail on the head. I was telling my ex that this was beginning to border on obsession.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting Q. I'd say forget, no but concentrate on now and the future to avoid that the horrific past repeats itself, maybe?

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Um... no, the time to forget Pearl Harbor is after Japan surrenders unconditionally.

[leafrider.livejournal.com]

I think this almost every year since 9/11. The people who carried out the attack died IN the attack. Osama bin Ladin is now dead. Many, many more innocent people have died since from various and sundry causes, some natural, some violent, some accidental. My mom died of cancer less than a year after 9/11 and by the time 9/11/2002 rolled around I felt ready to move on from her death, though I hadn't really yet, and I certainly felt ready to move on from 9/11. I've since lost other family members and friends, and guess what? I've moved on.

I've known people who were there or had family who were there, and I'm sure it will always be a bigger event in their minds than in mine and I feel for them. It's a big event historically, a horrible tragedy.

But yes, the memorials now, 14 years later, seem somewhat sensationalizing, not in the sense that they exaggerate the horror, it really was that bad. They seem obsessive to me in how they are designed to cause people to relive it in all its detail. I do think we need to move on.

[rosefox]

I think making the jump from "I'm really ready to forget" to "it's time to forget" is... presumptuous.

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

This. The particular events the post is referring to were not experienced equally. Age, location, numerous other factors ought to be taken into account.

There was an excellent call-in on Brian Lehrer's WNYC show from people who were teenagers at the time: http://www.wnyc.org/story/when-you-were-teen-911/

I would encourage everyone to have a listen. And maybe a touch more compassion than this post demonstrates.

[yardlong.livejournal.com]

I agree. It isn't good or beneficial to dwell on and keep negativity alive. I see that some are honoring that negativity this year, and it actually strikes me as an invitation of more of the same.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

I'm rather on the opposite side, in that I think the very idea of "forgetting" is absurd and impossible. Think of a time you suffered a keen, enormous, personal loss. Now imagine everyone running around saying "never forget!" on that day, every year. Or recounting to you, without prompting, where they were on that day (particularly when where they were is "nowhere near what happened.") It makes me want to punch people in the face. The only people who even risk forgetting are those who weren't there in the first place, or who remained somehow unaffected. "Forgetting is the luxury of the ignorant", I wrote on Facebook, before I tuned out for a 24 hour period in order to avoid what has become (in my opinion) an ostentatious display of competitive grieving via social media.

The whole culture changed. The world changed. If your own loss in that was small (or forgettable) that's fine, but it's a sign of your distance and disaffection, and has nothing to do with what happened to anyone else. If you'd lost anyone or anything truly important to you, forgetting wouldn't even be a question.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The whole culture changed. The world changed.

Much of the world has never had the luxury of thinking terrorism couldn't happen to us.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

That's true enough. But it took 9/11 for the rest of the world to join them.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

"Let go" strikes me as a better way of putting that sentiment than "forget", fwiw.

If people refuse to let go, they'll still be fighting over it eight centuries later. This is not a win.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Cultures need live memories of pain and horror, especially happy and prosperous ones. It simplifies empathy.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

That is a remarkable statement. I've never heard anyone put it quite that way, before.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[snippy]

People process differently, and at different rates. I found it relatively easy to avoid discussions and notice of the anniversary, after doing my own work to process my feelings early in the morning. What about Santayana? Sure, some people still have PTSD, and some people are using it for their own purposes, but dismissing it completely from the public discourse? How about answering bad speech with good speech instead? The lessons I see promoted that we are to have learned from it are not the ones I advocate, so I talk about the growth of security theater, the illegal and unnecessary war against people who weren't even behind the attacks instead of going after the ones who were, the encroachments of government surveillance on our privacy in the name of terror but instead being used for ordinary blackmail and criminal events, and so on. I don't want us to forget that panic drove us to allow a lot of really bad public policy.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I very much wish that our government/many people involved in our country dealt with the memory differently, since I am still having "Not in my name" quakes occasionally, but I don't think I can make judgments about how people process their grief/anger on an individual level.

[goljerp]

I'm kind of torn. On the one hand, I was living in NYC at the time. Yes, I was on the upper west side, and didn't work at the WTC, but I did have close friends who did (and survived) and, well, I was *here*. So I think it's appropriate for people to put flowers and candles at the Firefighter's memorial on 100th st and Riverside drive, just like they did right afterwards. And I had a discussion with my 9 year old son on Saturday, walking home from shul, about what it was about.

On the other hand, I am now working near the new world trade center, and I think the way the memorial there has turned into a tourist attraction (especially when a politician wants to show their creds) is kind of crass and in poor taste. I haven't gone to the memorial, becuase I was here.