What was the weather like on November 9, 1799
What was the score of the ball game on June 28, 1914?
What was on sale at the market on September 1, 1939?
I can’t answer these questions. But I can tell you that yesterday, it was a warm 28°C, the Red Sox lost 5-4, and watermelons were $3.99.
In fifty, a hundred, and two hundred years from now, people were care as little about those trivialities as we care about the price of grapes in Napoleonic times. Our children, grand children, and great-great grand children will read about this day, or rather, this time, with the same bored, teary eyes that we learned about the Persian wars, the crusades, and the Industrial Revolution, despite the enormous impact each of these events have had on the course of human history.
Now, I don’t mean to be a naysayer or a skeptic, and I definitely don’t want to seem overdramatic or as though I’m a fear monger, but we are witnessing living history, a moment in time that will forever shape the destiny of the entire planet. Dare I say it, we are living on the cusp of World War III.
The proof is all around us: Bombings in India; Israel invading Lebanon; North Korea testing missiles that can hit the US; Iraqi insurgents decimating American troops. The dominos are falling, and at the moment, there looks to be no way to stop them; no way to stop the house of cards from crumbling.
But who cares?
War, suffering, and tragedy has become little more than entertainment to those of us comfortably sitting at home, watching the thirty second news updates between uninspired performances on American Idol. We shake our heads in momentary disgust as we scan cbc.ca, and then we click on to see the latest pictures of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt.
After all, what can we do? How can we stop the suicide bomber walking into a café in Jerusalem? How can we stop the planes from dropping bombs on Palestine? How can we stop the missiles flying towards Japan?
But then again, why would we want to?
In North America, we have become complacent. War is entertainment; it doesn’t affect our lives. Sure, we may be inconvenienced by high gas prices, or added security at airports, but in the end, as long as our Tim Horton’s is hot, the internet is working, and there’s a new episode of Lost on, war is relegated to a small corner in the back of our minds.
I can’t help but wonder what our grandparents felt when Hitler invaded Poland and the world was suddenly thrown into another conflict? If I had to guess, I would say that my grandparents woke up, read the paper, shook their heads, and carried on about their everyday business. How could they know that within six years, sixty-two million people would be dead? Every small Newfoundland community lost at least one son to the terrible conflict that resonates through today; four out of every thousand Canadians fell on the battlefields of foreign soil.
But that was a different time. They were the Greatest Generation. They marched silently and without complaint into battle, and came home and rebuilt our nation. We honor these heroes, and thank them for their courage and their sacrifice. At least, we do on November 11. The rest of the year, we curse when a car with a poppy on the license plate cuts us off. Occasionally, we recognize their contribution to our world, but only barely. The nation cries outrage when a picture of three drunken revelers relieving themselves on our most sacred tribute to our heroes; we cry out for blood, but we are forgiving when one of the boys, full of tears, apologizes to veterans across Canada. We pat ourselves on the back for our devotion to those boys who gave their lives, and then we change the channel and watch reruns of Friends, satisfied that we have done our part.
In North America, we don’t believe in war. It’s not that we don’t recognize it exists, or that it has an impact on the world, it’s that we don’t understand it. We can’t appreciate the terror, the sacrifice, and the courage that is necessary in war. We watch Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and we say we understand. But how can we understand something so evil, so frightening, and so inhuman without ever experiencing it. Ask the families of Captain Nichola Goddard, Corporal Paul Davis, or Master Corporal Timothy Wilson if Stephen Spielberg really captured the true horror of war. As a nation we grieve for our lost soldiers, and then we turn on the hockey game.
We don’t care about war. As long as our status quo remains unaffected, why would we? Until it becomes real, we will never really care. Until the bodies of our heroic brothers and sisters and sons and daughters start filling the airports and each and every one of us knows someone who has served in Afghanistan, it will never be real. A wounded soldier here or a dead soldier there will be filed away in our collective memories, right there behind that head butting soccer player.
Of course, the World Cup is a better conversation piece than the warlords in Sudan. Nobody wants to talk about Chechen rebels unless Jack Bauer is in the same sentence. War is depressing. Sure, it exists, but as long as we don’t talk about it, it will never be real.
For years, I have wondered about my generation. Generation X, as is the accepted term. We’re the generation that came into awareness during the 80s. Overshadowed by the Baby Boomers, we have never felt a connection to our world. We watched the Berlin Wall fall down, but it was not our wall. We saw the Cold War end, but it was not our war. We have witnessed defining moments of the 20th century, but it was not our century. As a generation, we have been called lazy, apathetic, and shallow. The Baby Boomers built our society with their radical social protests of the sixties and seventies, and what did we do with that progress? We watched OJ Simpson in a white bronco. We watched the Monica Lewinksy Scandal. We watched MTV. The defining moment of our generation was the suicide of Kurt Cobain.
That is, until the morning of September 11, 2001. In an instant, our apathetic, materialistic, internet loving generation changed. For a few fleeting moments, we cared about more than our stock options and our email. We watched in terror, and asked how anyone could do such an inhuman thing. We cried and hugged our loved ones, and for just a fleeting moment, we were part of a truly global community. The terror that had otherwise been confined to the rest the world had suddenly sucker punched us, and we couldn’t breathe. For weeks, the sight of the towers collapsing remained fresh in our minds, and we gave our food and our money and our blood. “The terrorists will not win!” We declared.
The terrorists wanted to shake our culture, bring us to our knees. They wanted us to recognize them as a force to be reckoned with. They wanted to scare us. And for a time, they had. But today, barely five years later, it’s safe to say that the terrorists have not won. We watch American Idol every four months, and more of us vote for our favorite star than we do for our leaders. There is a war on terror, but for the average person, that war is nothing but an inconvenience; a footnote in the days events.
Outside of our secluded bubble, the world is falling apart, just as it did in 1799, 1914, and 1939. War is coming, but we don’t care. As long as our gas prices are somewhat reasonable and our internet is fast, who cares what happens in Asia, the Middle East, or Africa? Unfortunately, as to dot.com generation is painfully aware, bubbles burst, and when they do, the inevitable maelstrom of uncertainty comes rushing in.
We are products of the time we are living in, and we have grown up with the fall of communism and the rise of the internet. We live in a peaceful bliss because it’s what we know. Our apathy is our defining trait.
But as a generation, we have a responsibility to the future. Every generation has had it, and every generation has risen to the challenge. That responsibility is to protect our future before handing it off to the next generation. The Greatest Generation fought and stopped tyranny in its tracks. The Baby Boomers fought for equality and justice. And now we must also fight. We must fight for peace.
I don’t call on us to fight for peace by fighting wars. We must look for alternatives. Baby Boomers are still running our world, but we must stand up to them and say “these are your wars, we don’t want them.” We must stand together as a human race. As Christians and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and Hindus and Atheists, we must stand up to the advancing tanks, and turn away the missiles, and convince the suicide bombers that life is preferable to death.
Let our generation be remembered not as those who fought and died in World War III, but rather let us be remembered as those who fought and stopped World War III.
Because yesterday, it was hot outside. Today, the Red Sox will lose again. And in a hundred years, watermelons will still be on sale.
