It's been 13 years

[Foucaulf]

I kinda want to share my 9/11 story, and hopefully it won't be in too poor taste:

9/11 happened the year I moved to Canada. We had tried to move to the U.S. but wasn't considered adequate. That confused me then, because I wanted to go to Disneyland. I read about Disneyland in Chinese books and thought that was America's defining symbol. When the attacks happened, and my parents were astounded by what they saw on CNN, I wasn't as much. It wasn't Disneyland.

There's obviously a sense in which the attacks have been seared into a collective consciousness, immortalized, glorified and such. Individuals made it out to be some kind of scarring symbol, a paradigm shift, and consequently a justification to act carelessly. But this response was predicted, and the motive for the whole act is to be an opening salvo in a greater war.

The point of that story - apart from explaining why I just choose to talk little about it - is to recognize how these events in collective memory are ultimately sculpted by people. Making a show of it - with unverifiable boilerplate like "it shaped our generation" - means manipulating collective memory more than finding the truth. For those who can hardly remember the fallout or lack personal connections to the event, maybe it's better to stop for once.