A Different Point of View

No matter how sensible your ideas are or how sense making your opinions, you will sooner or later always encounter someone who disagrees with you and maybe even taking a stand at the completely opposite spot from where you stand. This will all be as valid even if your ideas and opinions are controversial, not politically correct nor publically accepted, but in our society, the extremes of these mentioned concepts are still relatively rare:


There are people denying that the holocaust of jews, homosexuals, communists, and so on never took place in Nazi Germany during the Second World War and most of us regard them as insane, blind or corrupted. -Perhaps all at once, and in my opinion, so we should. 


Then there are those who refuse to believe in evolution and who claims that the Christian god created the world approximately 4000 B.C but not many agree with them.


Above I've given you two examples, both motivated by some sort of conviction. In order to avoid to make this note spin off into a philosophical matter, I will just state that conviction is something of its own. Those who have a solid conviction mostly stand up for it no matter how disturbed others may think it is, but what about those who simply choose to turn their back and run away?


The reason for me to bring up the subject write this post is that I some days ago was contacted by someone who has obviously read my blog. This someone is evidently a Swede who apparently resides in the South Ukrainian country side. In his message to me he amongst other things wrote (refering to the Chernobyl project):

"You're ruining everything for those of us who are trying to forget."

This person himself is irrelevant and no one that I can pay much attention to, but his words created a query for me: Who is trying to forget the Chernobyl accident and why?  About all large disasters and trauma inducing events it is said that "we must never forget". This in order to avoid the same thing to happen all over again and thus my question was answered in a very simple way: No one forgets about it, or tries unless there is something to gain from it. Even though the average Ukrainian or Belarussian citizen doesn't think of Chernobyl every day, many of them are still affected by the consequenses so it is still a part of their consciousness. 


If you know that the berries are dangerous to eat, and that the milk is poisoned by strontium-90, you do not eat or drink unless you have no other choice (In Belarussia there are people who do not have a choice but this doesn't decrease their awareness). Here is something you cannot forget even if you want to.


For political reasons you may want to try to make people forget, if you have a goal to achieve. The Chernobyl disaster was also a financial disaster for the Soviet Union and to this day it still affects the Ukrainian finances, but whilst the construction of the Shelter proceeds in a slow pace, the new sports arena in Kiev, new in construction,  will be finished in time for the European Football Championships this summer. And with such a big event coming up, who thinks of an old decaying wreck.