We truly are a lucky generation. Those few who are too young
to have ever truly experienced a war that affected the way we
live our lives. There are exceptions, like the wars that break
out overseas that our armies send peacekeepers to. Or the Gulf
War, which in our lives took place at a time when many of us
were only 7 or 8. A time when images of war on a television
screen are nothing more than an adult preoccupation. |
|
No, most of our generation (in this continent) has not been
affected by a war. We might be the first in a very long time.
Many of our parents were alive during Vietnam--some may have
even fought in it--their parents before them were alive and fought
in WWII, and their parents might have seen the First World War.
My History class recently covered WWI, and it started me thinking.
We have all been taught how awful war is, yet as the years pass
and we grow up almost untouched by it, we seem to lose our perspective
of it. We tend to forget how awful it is until we see its images
and legacies immortalized forever in the frame of a picture or
newsreel. Pictures that revolt us and
yet, somehow, at the same time fill us with a sense of fascination
for all the destruction we are capable of inflicting.
To some, Remembrance Day isn't much more than a day off from
school. The horror of the World Wars sometimes becomes forgotten
with the passing of time. For many of us it was so long ago
that it seems like another world entirely. To our parents and
our grandparents it is a time to remember loved ones who died
for their country, for our freedom. To us, we never knew the
people who died, they are nothing more than history, and so,
Remembrance Day seems to get a little less important every year.
In some places stores are now allowed to open on this day.
Ten, twenty years from now, it may not even be remembered at
all.
I once heard that all the nuclear power in the world combined
has the ability to destroy the Earth several times over! Isn't
that amazing? Will we really need to do it again six more times
after the first? Somehow I think that once would be enough.
It would be almost funny if it wasn't so scary.
Einstein was once asked the question that if we were ever
to fight a Third World war, how would a war after that be fought?
He answered by saying that the Fourth World war could only be
fought using stones and sticks, because a Third World war would
reduce mankind back to the Stone Age.
They do say that "history repeat itself." It makes
you think, doesn't it? |