skypeacedoor

I want to write a belated response Stan Abram’s (from China/Divide) thought-provoking take on the SkyPeaceDoor Incident of the last year of the 1980s. They make what I think is a fundamentally profound point that everyone, everywhere should consider about the things they deem deeply significant – which is that the an event’s significance is a social construction of “selective attention.” This goes for 9/11, terror attacks, SkyPeaceDoor and other political or symbolic events that have meaning to us. More people die every year from industrial accidents in China than did all the Americans who died in the Vietnam War – so where is their Memorial Wall or any acknowledgement of their sacrifice? We choose to dwell on, glamorize, and remember the thousand or so who lost their lives in the SkyPeaceDoor but we choose to ignore other deaths. Why?

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