they're discussing 9/11 now in a tv dispute with participants like an author, a scientist, a journalist & a redacteur - I don't want to repeat their discussion here - because most of those arguments & insights we all know over-too-much -
but some side-effects of the discussion are may worth to be mentioned:
- the scientist mentioned that after 9/11 a lot of Americans feared to take planes afterwards & prefered to drive instead also longer distances by car - this resulted in that 100rds of Americans more died by car accidents on the streets, than there would have died if they would have used planes instead..
hmm - often fear isn't the most wise adviser (see Moores 'Bowling for Columbine') - It's wise to follow the hints your fears give you - but it's mostly unwise to become so terrified by your fears that you blindly just run into the other direction without seeing the abyss lieing there too..
they were also talking about the power of pictures, of the falsifications of pictures by different political sides (like in Lebanon war etc.), of how pictures manipulate us, but are also needed for our memory - & how often our memory picturese we got stored in our brain - don 't give us the exact information about what really happened then - details get lost or confused & influenced by whatever of by-informations to that happening is still stored in your brain-memory-chip..
one of he discussion members told about an experiment with students - they made a (not too heavy) fake crash with 2 cars in front of a lot of students of an university - they interrogated a lot of students about what they have seen of that accident (to show the different kind of memory to the same situation) - but they asked groups of them in a different way - some they asked about the cars that had crashed in front of their eyes - some others they queried about the cars that had touched in front of their eyes - some months later they asked these once consulted groups of students again, whether they had seen shards lying or flying around on that accident & most of the students who once had been asked about the crashing cars, told they had seen shards, but most of the students who have been once asked about the just touching cars couldn't remember about shards or glass splinters on that accident - can memory so easily be manipulated?
Some other in this discussion mentioned, that the majority of New Yorkians can still remember where they have been, when they heard the news about 9/11 - hmm - I thought about this for part of a second & well I also can exactly remember where I have been when I heard about that catastrophe.
I've been visiting my Thai friends Peos shop in the late afternoon - & her friend Peter later on took us to their flat to spend a nice evening under friends there. - While we were driving there - he told something about some terror act in USA (New York) - he had just a while ago heard it on the radio - well we didn't thought about it to be too serious - but we were a bit curious what later on the evening would probably tell us more in detail.
Peo prepared some supper (a mix of Thai cooking & German cooking) for us & while we later on sat in the living room - watching the news - I just couldn't believe, what really had happened there today- watching the planes flying there in just like that - seeing the towers slowly tumbling down & hearing about the 1000ths of victims - it was like seeing a horror fiction film - Did this really happen? - Of course it did. - I think I was the only one who got tears in his eyes - after getting aware about all the victims in & around those 4 planes - I went into the kitchen, like I was going to fetch something from there - but in fact I didn't wanted them to see my tears & I had to use a handkerchief to get my nose free - some minutes later I got containance again & went back to see the rest of the news - but Peo some time later told me, that she had seen my tears..
- but well - nothing to be ashamed of!
