Thanks to Ioannis and Tinks for commenting on the previous post. I deliberately posted the journalist’s view without commentary to see if it made the same sense as it did to me.

Regarding Tinks’ comment, I think it is necessary to draw a line here, albeit a rather sketchy one, between learning from remembering and remembering something for the sake of remembering.

I think it is important for us to remember the World Wars because of the famous adage by Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. I believe the actions of today should be informed and tempered by our knowledge of the past, and therefore see the necessity for painful reminders of our capacity for violence and brutality.

However, I fail to see any learning involved with the remembrance of the more recent events. I do see a lot of dramatisations of the last minutes of people, and not much analysis paid to the contributing factors and social significance of events. Just a lot of scaremongering. Perhaps not enough time has yet passed for people to dissociate themselves from the emotions and try to approach this more analytically.