A meme I'm not doing, just talking about
Jan. 12th, 2003 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tzikehThere is a meme going around which follows the "Where Were You When" pattern, and lists several major historical events (Kennedy, Challenger, natural disasters) which occurred between the 60's and today. I will now tell you something about the author of the meme, and something about me.
About them: Whoever came up with it is from the west of the U.S.A. All of the natural disasters they list (SF earthquake, Washington state earthquake, Mt. St. Helen's) happened on the West Coast of America, and none of the Midwest or East's natural disasters of the past 40 years (Hurricane Belle, Hurricane Andrew, the 70 tornadoes that hit the plains states on the same day in 1999) rated a mention, let alone disasters in other countries. The only items from other nations at all, in fact, were the fall of the Berlin Wall (which we made about us, anyway), the Gulf War (all about us), Princess Di's death (which, if the American coverage was anything to go by, was about Hollywood, not Britain).
About me: Where I am when a natural disaster strikes doesn't stay with me. Natural disasters are just that -- natural. Awful and tragic, of course, but I don't find them as horrifying as I do assassinations, terrorist attacks, or mechanical disasters. One is a risk we run simply by existing on a living planet. One is due to malicious forethought or stupidity or carelessness on the part of human beings and, is, for me, significantly more appalling. We can't stop the wind from blowing or the plates from shifting. We can teach people not to hate, make guns damned difficult to acquire, act on warnings rather than ignore them, and be more concerned about safety than about making deadlines, even if the world is watching. The sense that something could have been done to prevent the man-made tragedies is pervasive, for me, and makes them that much more dreadful.
Just a side note: I find the word choice for the item about 9/11 ("when terrorists knocked over the World Trade Center") rather strange.
About them: Whoever came up with it is from the west of the U.S.A. All of the natural disasters they list (SF earthquake, Washington state earthquake, Mt. St. Helen's) happened on the West Coast of America, and none of the Midwest or East's natural disasters of the past 40 years (Hurricane Belle, Hurricane Andrew, the 70 tornadoes that hit the plains states on the same day in 1999) rated a mention, let alone disasters in other countries. The only items from other nations at all, in fact, were the fall of the Berlin Wall (which we made about us, anyway), the Gulf War (all about us), Princess Di's death (which, if the American coverage was anything to go by, was about Hollywood, not Britain).
About me: Where I am when a natural disaster strikes doesn't stay with me. Natural disasters are just that -- natural. Awful and tragic, of course, but I don't find them as horrifying as I do assassinations, terrorist attacks, or mechanical disasters. One is a risk we run simply by existing on a living planet. One is due to malicious forethought or stupidity or carelessness on the part of human beings and, is, for me, significantly more appalling. We can't stop the wind from blowing or the plates from shifting. We can teach people not to hate, make guns damned difficult to acquire, act on warnings rather than ignore them, and be more concerned about safety than about making deadlines, even if the world is watching. The sense that something could have been done to prevent the man-made tragedies is pervasive, for me, and makes them that much more dreadful.
Just a side note: I find the word choice for the item about 9/11 ("when terrorists knocked over the World Trade Center") rather strange.
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Date: 2003-01-12 11:19 am (UTC)J.
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Date: 2003-01-12 11:23 am (UTC)Oh - I hope you don't think I'm saying it's bad to have done the meme. And yeah, my guess is that they're relatively young too, although the "where were you" phenom seems to have sprung from the J.F.K. assassination, and that makes it a natural starting point.
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Date: 2003-01-12 11:49 am (UTC)Interesting what you said about natural disasters. I don't care much about them either, unless I'm in the middle of it, like I was in 89. But the things that I do care about, the things that were life changing for me, are all about people. I can describe down to the way my hair was, the morning Jerry Garcia died, for instance, or where I was when I heard about Laurence Olivier's death. And while I know the Mississippi flooded its borders in the mid-90s, I can't remember exactly when or where.
J.
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Date: 2003-01-12 01:24 pm (UTC)And tzikeh, you're totally right about the "knocked over the WTC" thing. Ack. Do they really think that's what happened?
-J