Never Forget.

This topic is not solely about 9/11, but rather influenced by it. Today as I was walking to school I witnessed a man surrounded by a crowd, speaking, quite enthusiastically may I add, about the happenings of 9/11, and the conspiracies that surrounded it. I didn't quite hear much of what was said, but by the way the other students were retorting, either they were messing with him (likely), and/or he had a somewhat radical opinion on the events of twelve years ago. But that's just it, it was twelve years ago. Does it make sense to "never forget"? Obviously I'm not saying completely forget about the tragedy that occurred, or the lives that were lost. That's not the point. One thing I heard the man say was that Bin Laden could not have been responsible. What relevance does that hold today? People tend to cling feverishly to events that have long since occurred, even when the fallout has dealt with (at least to a degree). Obviously rectification is never a complete process, I'm not trying to say move on. To cite another example, probably a poor correlation, is the assassination of JFK. So much debate and controversy surrounds his death, but for what? Closure works in this situation, but what about the man I saw today? What is he fighting for? Hopefully I got my message across the first couple times: I'm not trying to influence a change or telling people to move on from grieving. I'd just like to hear your thoughts on dwelling on past occurrences in ways that may not be entirely necessary. Apologies also to non-American residents. I'm not exactly up to snuff with world history, thus me citing only USA-related events.

It is relevent, if only because the people of a democratic society deserve to know the truth.

As for conspiracies, there are both the type of people who want to connect the building of the Pyramids, Roswell, and JFK's assassination, and the type who actually do see connections between one event and another, or who can spot a lie.
The government lies, and hides things from it's citizens. Period. It would cause a hell of a lot more trouble, and work for itself if it didn't. Denying that it does is foolish.
However, the government may well be generally rotten, but not every word they say is a complete lie.

In the case that, for example, 9/11 was plotted and conducted by the U.S government, the relevence wouldn't be just to find out if, but why.

While I think the "never forget" line can sometime slide into a place where someone uses it as neverending justification for whatever they do based on the idea that they were victims once, it is important to have a clear memory of big world events like 9/11.

For one thing, there is just a matter is historical accuracy. Take Texas for example, and how their board of education is very political and how they attempted to change high school history books so that they don't mention the Atlantic slave trade by that name and instead as "Atlantic triangular trade." In other words, whitewashing. I don't want to go too much into the whys of history being important, but the short of it is that history is important because it influences peoples' actions and opinions in the present.

Another important thing is that there are now people who weren't alive at the time of big events in history: WWII, the Cold War, 9/11, etc. etc. Without people reminding us about how important these things were we can't really grasp how things were different before them, how people looked at the world differently. And if we can't come to grasps with the idea that the world can be different from what it is then we're not as likely to feel like the world can change. Imagine if people today just accepted that governments monitor you everywhere because of terrorism fears. That's kind of how things are today and I'd bet that a lot of people just shrug their shoulders and go "Well, that's how things are" even though before 9/11 things weren't quite like that. Or at least people wouldn't have shrugged their shoulders at the idea of being watched.

Personally, I find that the yearly 'Never Forget' chants have become kind of toxic. Yes, we need to honor the dead and those who sacrificed so much for our country, but conversely, we need to allow the wounds to heal. We need to move on collectively as a country, the best we can, and put that horrible day behind us, instead of re-opening those psychological wounds every single September 11th. We can't keep seeing the documentaries of people jumping from the 105th floor to escape the fire every year.There has to be a degree of closure in there, but I think that can vary depending on the person. But for someone who had a relative die in the attacks, I don't know how you could ever move on or adjust to life afterwards. I physically can't wrap my mind around it.

I watched a documentary of archival footage last night, and the interesting thing I noticed was how everyday people processed what was happening, how you saw a myriad of human emotions on display. Some people turned to anger, calling for bombings and retaliation, some people prayed, some grabbed their cameras to try to document or preserve what they were seeing and feeling. People handled the stress very differently.

It's also one thing to read about an event in history, and a whole other to experience one. I watched the north tower fall, with my own eyes, via a live feed of NYC. My grandparents witnessed the JFK assassination. You can read about it, after the fact, but to have lived through it is a whole different affair.

It's odd how the terrorist attack in London (7/7/05) is nowhere near as... media-fied? Although it was, in comparison, a small scale it was still a big thing here - I don't remember hearing about it for the last few years though.

I have to wonder if the "Never Forget" idea is just drilled in by media, who probably make a viewing of documentaries and 'special' news broadcasts during this time every year.

/sceptical

Yeah, 9/11 is bigger in the UK than 7/7. Perhaps the media naming it in the style of the WTC attacks didn't help though.
The fact that it was televised means it'll probably stick in the memory a lot longer - I'm pretty sure I watched the collapse as it happened on the news (I could be wrong, but I remember it being the afternoon, after school (Which would translate to morning in the US). By contrast 7/7 happened in the morning but I didn't hear about it until late afternoon.
There's also the fact the 9/11 lead to the invasion of Afghanistan etc. (Some people claim "the death toll from 9/11 is still rising"). The response to 7/7 was a lot less significant as far as I'm aware.

My sister was talking about how her class barely remembers 9/11 (well they were 5 at the time) so I'm thinking that there'll be a new generation which won't remember 9/11 or think much of it unlike us older folks who actually were old enough to know what was going on.