In light of recent world headlines (...Headline), it has been fascinating to gauge the response of at least my generation on Facebook. Would I know how my friends were reacting to the news if not for status updates and note-posting? Is this something we would talk about in conversation? Perhaps because of the child-based environment or perhaps because 9/11 evokes a unique and diverse set of perspectives in this city, it has NOT been a topic of conversation at school.
I've found profile-hopping on Facebook to be oddly helpful in processing my own take on the events. A few of the most resonant:
postscript: it is really awkward to be both an Obama supporter and a non-violence advocate right now. people cheering over death is freaking me out.
Not sure how I feel about crowds of people celebrating an individual's death, no matter who it is.
"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that"
~Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(apparently this has been proven to be part-quote and part-eloquent-but-never-spoken-words, but the sentiment is a great one, regardless)
There is no way that justice can be done; justice is already dead when war begins. All that can be done is a necessary evil, and again jubilation is a shameful way to react to that. [...] It's like entering a room where people throw cow shit at each other. You wouldn't want to enter that room, but you're pushed inside and some sonofabitch starts throwing cow shit at you. If you throw cow shit back and win the cow shit fight, you're not "clean": you stopped being clean when you entered the room and now you're a cow-shit thrower as much as he is. Your only victory will be to escape the cow shit room, but once you do that, you can't say that what he did and what you did are fundamentally different. You've the moral high ground, but you were still a cow shit thrower in a cow shit room and THAT is tragic. Celebrating your victory in the cow shit throwing contest is monumentally stupid: you should be celebrating your escape from the cow shit room instead, while still ruing the fact that you were ever made to throw cow shit in the first place.
(can you tell this writer is earning a graduate degree in philosophy?)
And a link:
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135927693/is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-bin-ladens-death
(NPR, incidentally, was one of the only major outlets on Monday to cover the angle presented among the quotes above)
Closing thought: How would our national and personal responses to 9/11 been shaped differently had Facebook and other social networking sites been as prevalent (or existent) in 2001? Discuss.
K
