Tony ([info]quikchange) wrote,
@ 2006-01-21 07:16:00
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Current mood: curious
Current music:Metallica - Cure
Entry tags:utility

Here's a quick question for you...
What's a major world event that occurred during your lifetime and had a significant impact upon your life?


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[info]thewizard
2006-01-21 03:41 pm UTC (link)
The easy one is the second Gulf War .... I don't know if I would have moved to Canada had it not happened. I never really asked my parents whether they wanted to move before then. I figure that since we split time in Austria/India during the war and had been to Canada a year or two earlier, it was a good excuse to evaluate everything and 'prepare' me through an American Embassy School in the time between returning to Saudi and emigrating.

The other huge event is 9/11, but from an IT perspective. I hadn't paid much attention to the DMCA, but it seems like 9/11 was the point when people started applying it and the Patriot act in full force, and a revival of calls for internet regulation and censorship along with a strong push for DRM (although that may very well be because 9/11 was when the Dubya administration got its act together. It was at that point that I truly started paying attention to electronic rights.

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[info]mumontherun
2006-01-21 06:14 pm UTC (link)
that's a very gd question! i don't know if this counts as global, but...

the assasination of Martin Luther King. suddenly my safe, insular world burst at the seams. i still remember the feeling, tho as an adult, i often confuse it emotionally with the assasination of JFK.

At that point, i had never even met black person, or a brown one for that matter, growing up in a village of less than 900 people just south of Barrie. But i knew that something really wrong was going on, and some of the shine came off the world. it's the first time i remember feeling utterly helpless and sad.

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[info]ramou
2006-01-21 11:55 pm UTC (link)
Interesting feeling. Helpless and sad. I'm far to young to share that memory, but 9/11 (I hate writing that, it seems so contrived) gave me that feeling for months. It made me think about whether it was worth even trying to live and be good in this world.

Although, then I was reminded (thank you LOTR, sort of) that if everything were easy, there wouldn't be a need to live and be good.

Since you are still here, may I ask you if you made a similar choice?

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[info]mumontherun
2006-01-22 12:40 am UTC (link)
the short answer is, of course, yes.

if we weren't presented with challenges, we wdn't learn. the decision to go on doing the best i cd was not a conscious one at that time, but as i faced the greater challenges of adulthood, yes, the decision to be as good and kind as possible, while it becomes a way of life, is tested and sometimes has to be consciously nurtured when things get too much. but it all starts in yourself, just to sound terribly cliche.

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___cai
2006-01-21 06:57 pm UTC (link)
that's tough.
i'm going to think about that and get back to you.

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[info]alex_the_greate
2006-01-22 12:55 am UTC (link)
The bombing of Kosovo by NATO. I was in grade six and it was the first time I realised that there was something out there beyond Canada. It was also the first time I was exposed to genocide, and to Canadians trying to stop it. Did it affect me? Heck yeah. I was 11 years old, young and impressionable. Realised then that we as human beings have a resposibility to each other to stop stuff like that.

Also, Dubya's war in Iraq. At the beginning I worried that it would end up being the start of another world war, and I subconciously started thinking of what I would do if that did happen. Mostly where myself and my family could go if the war spread to this hemisphere. I wasn't paranoid, I just didn't feel like panicking if it came to that.

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[info]tangbu
2006-01-22 09:06 am UTC (link)
Most major world events just pass by my little world. I thought about saying the fall of the wall and John Lennon's murder, but I think the event that had the most impact on me personally was the occupation of Tian'AnMen square. I cut out that famous picture of a student standing in front of a line of tanks and had it hanging over my desk for months.

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[info]zedinbed
2006-01-22 09:59 pm UTC (link)
I'll do the 9/11 cliche.

It happened a few days after I came to Canada. In fact our new apartment was getting painted that day and we couldnt find the TV under all the heaped stuff in the middle of the room. Being Muslim in a Muslim minority country, 9/11 has had a significant impact on how people perceive me and the apologist nature that my religious, sociological and ethical arguments have taken.

Had 9/11 not happened, I think I would be a lot less politically and cultureally aware of my aurroundings than I am right now.

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[info]kinthelt
2006-01-23 03:00 pm UTC (link)
Toss-up between Tiananmen Square and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall

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