The Years After...

I was looking at my old B.I.S.C (British International School, Cairo) yearbook this morning, while sipping my coffee and procrastinating. I started looking at the S3 pages...which were diaries of nuclear war. While modern kids have a lot on their plates, certainly, at least they are not being bombarded with the threat of nuclear war. It did make me a little ill to read 13 year-olds writing about charred corpses and the symptoms of radiation poisoning.

But at the same time, have we lost something? Yes, it was terror tactics, a whole generation (or actually two, mine and my mother's) who knew what would happen if THE BOMB was dropped. But now everyone has the bomb. There are not really Superpowers anymore...even though the former President did still act as if that was the status quo. I'm not sure there is that fear of using nuclear power anymore.

We are so exposed to horror these days, that I wonder if we've become immune... I know I would never watch'The Day After' or 'Threads' ever again... but don't we get more horrifying images in our daily lives now? I wish I knew.

The other thing that struck me was how politically savvy the kids we were were. We knew about detente, about the Cold War, about global politics. Yes, I learned about the American Revolution from the British side (and as a result, still am not sure what I'm supposed to call it)... and I learned my British History with a slight Colonial slant...(The Sun Never Sets on The British Empire)... in fact, the school itself had a slight colonial flavour. But I also got a more balanced view of world politics.

And it scares and saddens me, at the same time that I am glad that kids don't get this, that they don't get this. That they aren't aware. And the world is very different... but some things are still frightening.