asks: "From the Holocaust to 9/11, from Berlin to New York, the world is now studded with memorials to human suffering. But does this really mean we care more than we used to? And does our obsession with terrible events make it any less likely that we will repeat them?"
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Maybe there should be a memorial to end all memorials
started out to write just a few words and look what happened. Please bear with me, it may be worth it.
The greatest memorial we can make to any of our malevolent adventures as human beings is the somber commitment to never repeat them. These words have been said, time and time again; "never again", but as the brick and mortar monuments conduct their placebo therapy we find ourselves, in the absence of monuments of conscience, walking back down those same paths again in voluntary ignorance and stubborn, sentimental pride.
In a way war memorials act on the same level of significance and contradiction as the contested ten commandment monuments installed in and removed from our courthouses and public squares. Somehow having our commitment carved in stone reassures us of that commitment, and allows us to ignore it, an eternal apologist for our apathy.
Of what purpose are biblical monuments while this "nation under God" neglects such fundamental precepts as the pursuit of truth and "do unto others"? Of what purpose are holocaust memorials if the orphans of that tragedy then proceed to emulate it, even if in different terms? Of what purpose are war memorials so long as we perpetuate the Pavlovian response of giving violence for violence?
To whatever degree these monuments, as the author points out, allow us to participate in, to own in a way these horrors; acting as a catharsis, at once inflicting and then soothing our imagined, empathetic wounds; do they not in making those wounds bearable contribute to their repetition?
As I imagine the proposed 9-11 memorial, I'm confronted with a sense of self indulgent gratitude. This was our tragedy, our great wound. Standing in front of it, experiencing it we will indulge ourselves in the remarkable significance of that tragedy. in the author's words, our "victimhood".
This monument, any monument is defied by precedent to become anything more than an old scar we run our finger over in sadness and (we must be honest) pride in having endured it. No one among us can honestly say that the image of the twin towers has not become a icon of national pride, a catalytic emblem of and justification for our rage.
more....
The rest...
A more compelling, more significant memorial to 9-11 might be one that depicts the horrors committed in the name of that horror. One that confronts us with the fact that our we did not absorb that blow. Instead we reflected it, amplified it and inflicted it anew on the world around us.
Perhaps it is not the nature or image of a memorial that is challenged here, but the event memorialized, the act of memorialization. Maybe this is not a problem for Art to fix, it is rather a question of what society asks of Art.
It may be that we would all benefit more from reminders of the wrongs we have done, as opposed to dwelling in satisfaction on those done to us.
Imagine stark memorials to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in two American cities. Perhaps in the form of occasional markers denoting an imagined ground zero and then, radiating out along streets and sidewalks, in front of coffee shops and in playgrounds, plaques inscribed: "here , you would have been instantly vaporized", "here you would have died in 4 months from radiation". Bumping into these from time to time, we would be confronted with the horrific scale of what we, ourselves, have done.
To go with this perhaps a monument in Tokyo to the rape of Nan King or the Bataan death march, in Tel Aviv to the recent Lebanese victims of cluster bombs and phosphorous.
In thinking of these events, despite any possible rationales for them, we must remember that all violence, every horrific act is necessary in the minds of those who commit them. We are never alone or unique in committing 'justified' violence.
It is those minds- those that afflict, not the minds of those afflicted, that need to be impacted. To what degree our "victimhood" indemnifies us in our own violent pursuits is the measure of our failure to adequately memorialize.
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