Not entirely sure this is the right subreddit ... not even entirely sure what I'm asking. That said--
I am at an age where I have clear, adult memories of the Tienanmen Square protests when they happened in 1989. To me, it feels like it was "just the other day", so to speak. I recently saw a documentary about it, and about how Chinese censorship has led to a new generation of Chinese who know little or nothing about this event.
Since seeing the documentary, I have spoken with many Americans about the event, and I've learned that the vast majority of people who are too young to remember hearing about it when it happened (under 35 years of age, or thereabouts) ... also have little or no recollection of the event, either. People in their 40s remember it like it was yesterday; people under 35, mostly, never even heard of it. So, with comparatively little censorship here, our memory of this event is barely any better than the average Chinese.
This experience has made me realize that there is probably a whole litany of major historical events that are only known about, mainly, by people old enough to remember when they happened.
I wonder, how common is this? Do most major world events "disappear" within a generation, only to be maintained by historians ... or "re-"remembered 100+ years later, once they are considered (relatively) ancient history?
Is there any known/studied sociological implications/repercussions (eg, the burgeoning belief, as firsthand witnesses die, that the Holocaust was exaggerated or a hoax) How much do current socio-political trends tend to link back to major historical events of 30-ish years ago (eg, public distrust of government in the post-Nixon era)?
I realize now, that people entering college today, have no real memory of what the US was like prior to 9/11. What are we losing?
Like I said, I'm not really sure what I'm asking ... just that I've come to realize there is this mostly-invisible period of recent history that took place (for me, at least) after WWII, but before I was old enough to remember it first-hand ... and I'm just wondering what historians think about this.
ETA: It's like I've discovered this bright red line separating the generations, that no one else sees. Everyone my age remembers Tienanmen Square and--without ever talking about with anyone--we all assume everyone else remembers it. Now, I've realized that everyone under 35 is walking around with a big hole in their worldview, and they don't even know they're missing anything. Now, I want to know how many other hidden lines are out there.
There’s a lot going on here but I think what you’re getting at is something close to the idea of cultural memory. This related to some of the post-modern ideas of history as something a person or a society shapes and creates, a living breathing thing that we use as a tool to relate to the past and tell ourselves who we are in relation to it. And stuff. I’m not very good on the historical method posts because I’m untrained.
But you have something in your memory that you find personally very meaningful, the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. And I think you’re disturbed that something you find historically important is maybe not making it into American cultural memory. On some level a society decides collectively what memories to preserve and which ones to let fade away. What does Tiananmen Square mean to the modern American? Possibly it’s not that meaningful to our cultural identity now. It happened a long time ago, in a country half a world away that most Americans have never visited. Our relationship with China has changed. The first world/second world idea and terminology isn’t used anymore. We still have democratic uprisings in other countries that Americans find very interesting, just not there.
Let me draw you another “bright red line” since you asked for them, this one you and I may be on the same side of, not sure how old you are though. Polio vaccine. They started gunning kids with those in big drives after 1955. That means most of the “boomer generation,” which is my parents, getting the vaccine. So people my parents’ age, they pretty much they “all know someone” who had polio. Some of them can remember stuff like being kept home from the pool in the summer. My mom has vividly described to me the day they lined her and all the other kids up at grade school and machine-gunned them all in the arm with one of these bad boys. So 60s+ aged Americans remember polio, and they remember the “miracle” of the polio vaccine.
But move a generation down and they vividness of polio in people’s memory is pretty dim. Now I think the cultural memory of polio is probably pretty low in America (edit: okay mind blown: those are smallpox vax scars not polio, people in the boomer bracket just call them polio scars because they got them at the same time, my mom definitely identified those to me as polio scars. More cultural memory!!). The only vaccination breakthroughs I really have in my personal memory bank (that is to say I can specifically remember going to the doctor to get this new vaccine) are chickenpox and HPV, neither of which is as dramatic a breakthrough as polio. I actually sort of had the same thought as you the other day - I was looking at my husband’s few little chickenpox scars and I thought hey, there’s a good chance my kids (should I have any) aren’t going to “know” about chickenpox.
I’m a little sad on some levels that the “miracle” of vaccines is fading out a little from American cultural memory, because I think it’s a rather quiet yet highly transformative cultural experience for America. A disease used to cripple children, attacking seemly at random, rather suddenly, poof, it’s gone. Who knows, maybe with the anti-vac stuff it will get a resurgence if we “decide” vaccine history is something we need to keep in the cultural memory. Cultural memory is an evolving thing.
I’m going to make a bold statement as say you should relax a bit about the people you meet who don’t know what the Tiananmen Square means! The kids in college who don’t “know where they were” on 9/11 still know what it was and know what it means to America. We have lots of events in American cultural memory that nobody personally remembers, yet everyone remembers, like slavery, or the American revolution. But it still evolves: the memories I carry of what the Civil War means to Americans today is much heavier on the stories of the slaves than my parents, who from my impression have more of a Brother vs. Brother romantic idea of it, just because the cultural memory about what that war means have changed pretty significantly, because America has changed pretty significantly.
Anyway. If you think Tienanmen Square is something people need to remember, tell them about it! The “bright red line” passes away pretty quickly into the period when nobody personally remembers the event at all, only what it means.
