system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
9/11 "all buildings matter"



Edit: OMG IVE NEVER GOTTEN AN AWARD BEFORE THANK YOU SO MUCH
gpt
So I genuinely don’t say this publicly cause I get it is sensitive. Now it was asked, and this topic kinda brought up. 9/11 is new years on my country’s calendar. I missed the bombings. Vaguely heard about it over drinks, someone pointed at a movie poster with the twin towers on a neighbouring store window and said ‘someone took that down like a Hollywood action move, did you see it?’. I was sad for a moment, like all war/destruction, and moved on. I paid attention over the news coverage like any other world event. Not too deeply.

There’s more to this analogy too. There was an American embassy bombing in Kenya before 9/11. Hundreds of Kenyans died, 7/8 Americans…will never forget watching the marines (whose kids I went to school with, and met at the marine house events etc.) pushed aside hurt people needing evacuation to look for Americans only. All live on the news, CNN international and everyone. No thoughts and prayers back then. The world has come a long way if we can say thoughts and prayers with the ~300 people who died that day and multitude injured. Yet most Americans don’t know it happened. The new embassy has since moved to a central residential area, near the UN, massive fortress, but putting more people at risk all around it imho

When the last mall was attacked in Kenya, 2013, international media focused on the American/Canadian/foreign casualties to appease the comments online which were mostly Americans asking why they had to read/see that when it didn’t affect them…

and the images were never/rarely censored or forewarned when it was these casualties pictured. No regard for the mental well being of the affected. That’s how ~10yo me experienced the Kenyan bomb blast (it shook our house), and then watched people who look like me pushed aside by my friends’ parents’ and their colleagues. That’s how little I actually meant to them had a fire caught at our American school for example…nobody stopped to check or ever hear how it felt for us though. The school community was shaken over the 7-8 Americans who died, and those in our school community who were near misses. At least today people notice those other lives matter too. And I know better than to compare 9/11 for Americans with a festivity I’m used to- and we all deserve the same courtesy back. Some cultures and countries have higher ethnocentricity too, I think the US is up there but more awareness now 🤞🏾

This is why it’s important. 

How we respond to others is becoming clearer in the nuances, but we have yet to change our misconceptions and behaviours. Changing behavior on a social scale is much harder, especially when people can find each other online to form divisive cells. There’s still progress to be made, and we will see more of it as human communications become more transparent and measurable. I once read ‘it’s not the violence that’s new, it’s the cameras’. And now social media, algorithms, and bots easily manipulating under/miseducated masses…

Live and learn…never stops

Oh wow, thanks for the award…🫢