You know you are getting old when:

[tonyb]

You have to wonder if that type of monument will have the same type of impact a hundred years from now, after everyone who knew the people named, and the war the wall represents, have themselves died. There are a lot of Civil War and WWI obelisks and such with names on them, and when people look at them they see names -- without really a lot of sense that these were once actual people who walked the earth. And then they sit on the base of those monuments and eat their lunch.

This is what I mean about monuments being largely for the generation that erects them. A hundred years from now people will have their own tragedies to commemorate -- and the tragedies of a generation that they didn't know will just be something that happened once to somebody else.

Mortality denial is what we humans do. Gotta wonder if it's necessary to our mental stability. There's an argument that it's at the heart of all human progress, this combating the worst that nature can throw at us.

My biological father, the fellow who croaked when I was four months old, is buried behind a church in the Wisconsin countryside. The oldest graves there, the ones nearest the front, are adorned with markers inscribed mostly in German. Exposure to the elements for well over a century has some of those inscriptions all but erased. That's life. And death.

The indigenous people of the coast of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska deliberately left those elaborate (and spectacular, often) totem poles to succumb to the elements, over the generations. It was something of an acknowledgment that nothing lasts forever, that everything eventually fades away.

 

[3fingers]

We haven't had any Civil War monuments removed here -- of course our side won.

Be patient. My problem with all of this is that people don't think about the end game. There is practically nothing that isn't offensive to somebody. The founding fathers including George Washington are on the list now. There's no end to it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I know the Lakota have a problem with Mount Rushmore -- and I agree with them. The whole thing was cooked up in the 1920s to goose tourism, which is hardly a sacred purpose, by an artist with impeccable Ku Klux Klan credentials, on land illegally seized by the US. That's a monument to something, all right, and it's unfortunate that it's probably the one relic of the USA that will still exist in 10,000 years.

 

[Zombie_61]

You have to wonder if that type of monument will have the same type of impact a hundred years from now, after everyone who knew the people named, and the war the wall represents, have themselves died. There are a lot of Civil War and WWI obelisks and such with names on them, and when people look at them they see names -- without really a lot of sense that these were once actual people who walked the earth. And then they sit on the base of those monuments and eat their lunch.

This is what I mean about monuments being largely for the generation that erects them. A hundred years from now people will have their own tragedies to commemorate -- and the tragedies of a generation that they didn't know will just be something that happened once to somebody else.

There is a smallish park in my hometown called Founders Memorial Park; actually, it's two small parks divided by a street. In each half there is a small "monument", each containing a list of names with no explanation. There are no swingsets or slides for children to play on, just grass, trees, and cement walkways. As such, when I was growing up everyone called it "Dead Man's Park" because the rumor was that it was formerly a cemetery and that people were still buried there. A few years ago the "monuments" were replaced due to vandalism, and this prompted me to do some research to find out why these people were honored in such a way.

As it turned out, the rumors were absolutely true. These two plots of land were formerly known as Mount Olive and Broadway Cemeteries; the first internment occurred in 1881, and both cemeteries were primarily "populated" by the families who first decided this would be a good place to put down roots and build a city. The cemeteries were eventually abandoned, fell into disrepair, and were declared a public nuisance in 1958, at which time efforts were made to locate the descendants of the people buried there (1,291 total) so the bodies could be relocated and the land repurposed as a "quiet park". In several cases no descendants were found, so those bodies are still buried there because the city was not legally allowed to relocate them without family consent.

I mention this because I've never met anyone who is related to anyone who was formerly, or is currently, buried there. Time has passed, and those "monuments" have become not much more than two concrete slabs with a bunch of names on them. The names of the cemeteries were added to them when they were replaced as I mentioned above, but otherwise they're just there and not many people pay attention to them while they're picnicking, tossing their frisbees, and kicking their soccer balls back and forth. So I think this reinforces Miss Lizzie's thoughts about the impact such monuments have once the people who erected them are gone; there was surely a time when those names were meaningful to someone, but now they're just random lists with no context.

Mortality denial is what we humans do. Gotta wonder if it's necessary to our mental stability. There's an argument that it's at the heart of all human progress, this combating the worst that nature can throw at us...

That's an interesting thought, though I'm not sure I agree with it. I've known people who were so afraid of death that the mere mention of it would nearly make them a nervous wreck. Conversely, I've known a few people who knew--truly knew, understood, and accepted--they would die one day, and they seemed to be generally happier, more stable, and more reasonable. Mind you, they weren't looking forward to it and weren't the "thrillseeker" types that seem hell-bent on forcing the issue, but this acceptance simply allowed them to get on with their lives without being preoccupied by how and when their ticket would be punched.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Be patient. My problem with all of this is that people don't think about the end game. There is practically nothing that isn't offensive to somebody. The founding fathers including George Washington are on the list now. There's no end to it.

This reminds me of the giant Buddhas of Bamyan. I'm sure the Taliban felt perfectly righteous in destroying them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

 

[Fading Fast]

It is possible that every single documentary on the Third Reich ever made has shown that exact clip, which means I have seen it hundreds, if not thousands, of time in my life.

Be patient. My problem with all of this is that people don't think about the end game. There is practically nothing that isn't offensive to somebody. The founding fathers including George Washington are on the list now. There's no end to it.

Growing up, I had one relative (a distant aunt via marriage) that hated Ellis Island because of how her father was treated there. I have no doubt many immigrants where not treated at Ellis Island with the proper respect they should have been accorded in their day and certainly not by our standards today.

Years ago, when it opened as a museum, I went to see it and while the story was somewhat balanced (told some ugly with the good) - the tone was praising and positive. Since then, we've become a more self-critical country (not enough for those who are always angry at the country and too much for those who want to elide over its faults), so, my guess, the story is more critical, but probably still favorable in tone (it is very hard for people not to want to feel good about their work, their passion, their interests - which are who usually works at memorials / museums and who tell their stories).

Thinking about that has given me insight into why I don't like, overall (there are exceptions), the tearing down of even offensive monuments. They - good, bad, ugly, positive, negative - are part of history and tearing them down seems primitive and emotional in many cases - like when the Taliban blew up the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Isn't the better approach to tell the full story where possible.

Lizzie brings up Mount Rushmore. Let's tell that story - the KKK artist, the land grab, the grubby tourist reason - but despite its ugly birthing, the monument has superseded that for many and tearing it down, IMHO, would be the wrong answer. Maybe my aunt, if still alive, would want Ellis Island torn down - or maybe she'd be okay with it standing as long as the full story was honestly presented - I don't know, but being the ancestor of an offended party shouldn't give you absolute decisioning over monuments and memorials that have meaning to many and not just those offended.

I've taken incoming fire from some who think my views aren't decisive enough - well, so be it - I believe an Aristotelean balance is the answer to many issues. So, each monument / memorial needs to have all these competing issues debated with the outcome a thoughtful balance. My lean will always be to keep and explain (like we do with some of the most vile historical "camps" we have - the concentration camps in Germany).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the deal with Mount Rushmore that bugs me the most -- aside from the Boys From Marketing/KKK/treaty-violating land-grab aspects -- is that it promotes exactly the sort of overblown personality-cult idolatry that we ridicule other nations for encouraging. Something like the Lincoln Memorial is one thing -- it does have an educational function aside from just being a Big Statue. But is blasting out the side of a mountain to erect monstrous heads of Our Secular Gods really all that different from putting up a giant statue of Enver Hoxha that revolves to face the rising sun? Or Lenin On Ice?

I think it's important to realize that The Four Big Heads were just flesh-and-blood men trying to figure things out as they went along. They weren't divine, or divinely inspired, and the kind of barbarous idolatry that Rushmore represents seems to me to be contrary to the idea of understanding who they were and what they did. I'm not saying "get rid of it" -- although doing so would make a great neo-WPA project -- but I think it's worth reevaluating the whole question of why it was built in the first place and what it really means. Idol worship shouldn't be an American Value.

I'm not real keen on the Washington Monument either. There must be a better way to remember The Father Of Our Country than erecting a 555-foot stone phallus.

 

[tonyb]

...

That's an interesting thought, though I'm not sure I agree with it. I've known people who were so afraid of death that the mere mention of it would nearly make them a nervous wreck. Conversely, I've known a few people who knew--truly knew, understood, and accepted--they would die one day, and they seemed to be generally happier, more stable, and more reasonable. Mind you, they weren't looking forward to it and weren't the "thrillseeker" types that seem hell-bent on forcing the issue, but this acceptance simply allowed them to get on with their lives without being preoccupied by how and when their ticket would be punched.

Perhaps "defiance" would be a more fitting word than "denial," although considering the certainty of death, and our certainty of that certainty, the distinction often proves hard to discern. We do what we can to postpone that unhappy ending, and we craft tales to make that ending, if not happy, at least somewhat less unhappy. You know, the flesh is temporary, but the spirit lives on. Scores of recumbent virgins awaiting you in Paradise, you devout little horndog, you! (The marketing department at Al Qaeda hit on a winner with that campaign.) Or, you get to be with Grandpa again! And every dog you ever loved!

In the absence of anything more tangible (let alone sensible), that'll have to do. My prayer to the FSM is that our advancing technologies will eventually make such thinking as obsolete as flat-earth theories. I won't live to see it, but I do indeed wish that for humanity.

 

[vitanola]

Just what I had been thinking. I did not have the nerve to make the post, though.

 

[Trenchfriend]

German humor:

2:57

 

[Fading Fast]

...I'm not real keen on the Washington Monument either. There must be a better way to remember The Father Of Our Country than erecting a 555-foot stone phallus.

Like on the car models I used to build growing up, is there a scale measure on the base of it?

(Heck, we know a lot more about his teeth than ever I cared to.)

 

[HanauMan]

Talking of German bands.....

Here is a German joke I heard when living in West Germany, about East German Rock n' Roll bands.

Why is a East German rock band like the sun? Because both rise in the east and sink in the west.

 

[2jakes]

Like on the car models I used to build growing up, is there a scale measure on the base of it?

(Heck, we know a lot more about his teeth than ever I cared to.)

My Bad!

 

[Trenchfriend]

When the girls at your age are really 33, now.

 

[2jakes]

"The worst part of being old is remembering when you was young!"

Richard Farnsworth “The Straight Story”.

 

[HanauMan]

My Bad!
View attachment 111639

I know I'm older when I get a series 1974 dollar bill in my change and I automatically think back to what I could have bought with that same dollar as a nine year old in 1974.

Answer: a comic book, a soda, a bag of Cheetos and a Tootsie Roll!

 

[Trenchfriend]

But, the older you get, the more you're looking damn good with hats!

 

[2jakes]

I know I'm older when I get a series 1974 dollar bill in my change and I automatically think back to what I could have bought with that same dollar as a nine year old in 1974.

Answer: a comic book, a soda, a bag of Cheetos and a Tootsie Roll!

I have several Thomas Jefferson $2 bills and a bag of black steel pennies.

For 75¢, I could have bought a huge serving of chocolate malt with
real whipped cream & cherry on top (optional) with the rest of the contents
placed next to my glass to finish.

Today it’s about $6 and the contents are half size in a paper cup!.

 

[Fading Fast]

When the girls at your age are really 33, now.

I mention this to you periodically as it is sincerely intended to help. You are too young to be lamenting your age - which is still very young. Live life - do fun things / do stupid things / do things - and then come back to this thread in 20 or so years and grumble with the rest of us (who will then be too old to type).