Did it change the world?

JerryLove · 12-01-2003, 01:58 PM

I was asked to prove that the events of 9/11 changed the world. Given such a broad request, I've chosen to simply make a poll of it.

So the question is: Did 9/11 change the world?

**Ted Logan** · 12-01-2003, 07:47 PM

I don't see much difference.

Jonular · 12-01-2003, 10:18 PM

No, not the whole world. Afterall, how did it change....um.....Uzbekistan?

~Jon

Travis · 12-01-2003, 11:29 PM

It did--for a few months.

SccHarpGirl · 12-01-2003, 11:29 PM

In the long run, not really.

In about 100 years, it won't have mattered at all.

Yojimbo · 12-02-2003, 12:22 AM

Uh...how can you say it has not changed the world? Sorry if I'm being ethnocentric, but when America changes, so does much of the rest of the world. 9/11 at the very least gave Bush a very solid foothold as an incumbent president, and given some of the policies of his administration, that is very significant.

JerryLove · 12-02-2003, 06:45 AM

Two wars and a patriot act later, with a US that has restarted foreign assassinations and a rather different political climate, I'm a little surprised by the "no".

To say "well X wasn't effected" is to more or less say that nothing changed the world. Getting rid of smallpox didn't; I'm sure there was some island that never had a case; and WWII certainly didn't, how did that effect Andes mountain men? BTW Ubakistan is near Afghanistan, it most certainly has effected them.

Travis · 12-02-2003, 08:23 AM

It definitely changed the world--it'd be silly to say otherwise. It's all we heard about for on the news for nearly six months.

Jas de F · 12-02-2003, 10:31 AM

"It changed the world"? What does that mean? Changed the world how? It affected the world, yeah, or a whole lot of the world, at least. It changed U.S. foreign policy for a time. But when someone says something "changed the world" I think of permanence...did 9/11 change the world forever? I don't know. I doubt it. In 500 years, will what happened on 9/11 have any effect on the policies of various nations and the thought processes of various people? It's unlikely.

Of course, 9/11 did change the world in the sense that a great many things that will happen in this world would not have happened were it not for 9/11. But then one could argue the whole "butterfly beats its wings and starts typhoon" bit...in one sense or another, everything "changes the world." I really think "change the world" is a rather ambiguous phrase.

Travis · 12-02-2003, 11:52 AM

Yeah that's very true. One could say that everything changes the world in one way or another, so what is meant by that needs to be more clearly defined.

JerryLove · 12-02-2003, 12:03 PM

It is because of the vagueness of the question that I brought it up as a poll to begin with. I would argue, however, that any definition of "change the world" where functionally everythong changes it, or functionally nothing changes it, is not a very useful definition... so find your happy in-between.

Blaster Master · 12-02-2003, 12:31 PM

I have to say no, because not every country was affected.

Jay42 · 12-02-2003, 12:35 PM

Jerry, I ended up voting No only due to the semantics of the question. There are 192 sovereign countries on earth and some of the remote ones definitely remain unchanged.

What if we asked if 9/11 affected at least half of those countries though? Now THAT'S a spicy meat-a-ball!

Yojimbo · 12-02-2003, 01:03 PM

So some of you would say WW1 and WW2 didn't change the world, because there's the possibility that some remote country may have not felt the effects? C'mon. Then what is a world-changing effect? The apocalypse?

perhaps · 12-03-2003, 12:42 AM

WWI and WWII effected way more countries and people than 9/11.