[lit-ideas] Re: Some of you may remember ... ueber-gaffe
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:31:58 -0400
Hi, Phil!
The "may" does not suggest a significant difference.
You may disagree.
You wrote: "I find Eric's comments interesting in that
he seems to suggest that all Americans _should_ know
where they were when they heard about the attacks of
9/11. . . . . I would be interested in Eric's
explanation of why all Americans should know where they
were on 9/11."
Phil, your "should" strikes me as a philosophical
land mine, and I'll save my comments on that "should"
for the end of the post. My "may" and your "should" ...
However, almost all Americans alive during Pearl Harbor
knew where they were when they heard the news of the
attack. The same with JFK; it's almost a commonplace of
American culture that people remembered where they
were when JFK was shot.
Why should 9/11 differ from -- or be less than -- these
other calamities? More were killed on 9/11 than at
Pearl Harbor. Its cultural significance is on par with
JFK's assassination. That's why Obama's remark is a
gaffe: it was condescending and strangely alienated
from mainstream ethos. Perhaps he was playing to those
who, for political reasons, would marginalize the
significance of 9/11. I don't know.
Perhaps, because you are Canadian, you also miss the
iconic status of "remembering where you were when" this
or that major US event happened. It's not your country.
Of lesser events, Obama's remark would be germane. For
instance, I can remember where I was during the
Challenger Shuttle disaster, and many of us do.
Now the "should" in your post: the attempt to abstract
some Kantian universal. At first, I thought you were
merely being a sophist, but after some sleep, I see you
are intrigued by the notion of obligation. I can only
answer that there is no "should" in play here, merely a
sense of the culturally appropriate.
For example, if a US citizen, who had attained the age
of reason when JFK was shot, could not recall where he
or she was that day, they would probably be considered
weird or socially retarded. And with some cultural
justification. How disconnected and out-of-touch must
one be not to have reacted to that event and stored
one's relation to it in memory?
It's akin to not knowing where one was when one's
parent died. Surely you cannot make a moral argument
from not knowing, but you can make an argument for
cultural deficit or extreme self-centeredness.
Best.
Eric
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