Quote from Time;1147187:
How? How can you see people dying and think "meh"? I'm not saying you still have to care or anything like that, but how can you just not care when you see people dye. I'm assuming you were old enough to understand given your blunt recollection of your "meh" feelings, so how does any person watch a tragic event and respond with that level of indifference?
Because its not related to me.
Tragic, yes. But there are thousands of people dying right now elsewhere. Syria is a pretty good example. Should I feel more inclined to feel bad about it because it happened in America? That's pretty ridiculous.
I'm as respectful of those who were involved in the events of that day as anyone else. But feeling bad about it doesn't bring the dead back, and it doesn't make things better for their families. I'm not obligated to do that. If I died in a tragic event, I wouldn't expect or want anyone unrelated to me to feel bad about it. I wouldn't expect people related to me to expect people unrelated to me to feel bad about it.
To me, the words "The news I saw today was very unfortunate." is the exact same as "meh" to me. It doesn't impact the lives of those who aren't connected, but people have conditioned themselves to convince themselves that they are upset about bad news that don't apply to themselves. This is why I feel more detached towards tragic events than most people, or at least I feel more conscious of how detached I am than most people. Every day something bad happens to someone, there is news coverage about it, then press conferences, debates, controversies, and then things die down and everyone who wasn't affected returns to their every day lives until it happens again.
So how long until 9/11 is just another moment in history? Events like these are marked quite often on our history, but I don't see anyone going any further back than a few generations to "remember" and "respect" those events. If we do, its usually only for our country. Hell, I think everyone outside of Haiti forgot about Haiti. People here in America don't gather around on March 11th for the remembrance of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan. School shootings happen and we can't even remember which shooter is for which school a year later. Every day of the year, every hour of the day, every moment, something tragic happened to someone. There have been enough lives and events for that now.
People don't care. They convince themselves they do. Put on a face. They feel emotions when they see the news, and then its back to whatever they were doing. I don't mean to discredit those who genuinely do care. They're a small minority.
I don't think it is bad of them. Though it is somewhat hypocritical. It's just a testament to how small we all are in this world.
Value what you want. I value what I see in front of me. This in itself is a contradictory to what I've been rambling about, but its the simple answer I've come to accept and agree with.