21 April 2011

The 9/11 Memorial

The time is approaching for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
Now you may be thinking that Bin Laden did it, the US government did it, it was the Illuminati, it was caused by negative Earth Energies, it was aliens hell bent on revenge for all that rubbish we broadcast on the satellite TV etc. etc. But, no matter what your theory for who was responsible for 9/11, no one can deny that the deaths of all those people was a massive human tragedy.
People like to mark the anniversaries of tragic events, like deaths, with some sort of fitting memorial. Usually these are designed to bring us closer to the spirit of the dead person or people, for example, going to a place that they enjoyed and lighting candles or singing their favorite song.
Not in this case. Whoever designed this piece of crap decided a little differently. In honour of the thousands of people who died on that day, many in states of extreme terror and pain inside collapsing burning buildings, this person decided that a fitting tribute would be to encourage mourning loved ones to spend their hard-earned cash on some crappy bits of cheap metal glued together badly to look a little bit like the twin towers. Adding in a few candles, it looks a bit like the buildings are on fire.
Brilliant. So this will achieve what exactly?
For the people holding the memorial with this statuette: instead of remembering the happy, positive, fun things about their loved one's life, they just get to relive the trauma of their horrible death, and wallow in their own pain and misery as a result, thus making them less happy.
For the spirits of the dead people - if you believe in them - they will also be quite unhappy about it, I mean they died horribly in the twin towers, so how is an image of them going to be enjoyable or help them reconnect with their living families?
(As an aside, I expect Jesus feels the same way about crosses. If you were pondering returning to the land of the living, would you want to come back to humanity, if humanity had spent 2000 years sculpting images of the device they used to torture you to death?)



For the people who designed and built this hideous effigy: Riches. Current retail price is about $18 from the NY Fire Department, though this will likely increase as we get closer to the anniversary. Manufacturing cost, probably a few pennies, since it was made in some sweat shop in China.

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