Suppose you could just pick out 10 people throughout history and kill them off as children. Your goal is to knock off those who’ve most prevented progress toward a peaceful, stable prosperous, sustainable world.
Would you do it if it were possible? If so, who would be on your list and why? If not, why not.
For myself, I wouldn’t do it. Even when I think of an obvious target like Hitler, I think of the benefits of the world being galvanized into action against him. I think of things like NATO and the concept of mutual defense (even though NATO was nore directly a response to Stalin, another good candidate), the UN, international tribunals and egitimizing the concepts of universal human rights. I think the whole of German society was poisonous at the time, and some other loon might have stepped up to be just as evil as Hitler.
Of course, maybe I’m not looking back far enough. Can we identify the person most responsible for religious intolerance? The early empire builders?
Maybe I’m really asking if the person makes the times, or the times makes the person. What do you think?
This is tough… There’s a variety of questions here, and I’ll try and put in my input (get it, get it?). In my opinion, the times make the person. Through whatever small actions, people shape an environment around them. This environment, naturally, has some problems, which will gradually arise. People need change periodically, and similarly, people have little patience and rarely try to reasonably solve these problems. So, we get opprotunists, or historical figures, who seem destined to fill in these times. I’m positive that right now, in the US, we have our George Washingtons and our Ghandis, but there’s no call for that (well, there is, but these people aren’t in any position to have a significant amount of underlings listen to them)
If I could go back and kill people (woah, I sound like a butcher) it would be people in a position of power who made things for the worse, and also those who just generally made things more complicated. I don’t know if I would actually do this, but, I’m leaning towards a yes. Stalin, Hitler, the obvious choices, and for a reason. Then, I run out of ideas, and I’ve lost my train of thought. If I refind the tracks, I’ll be back
I probably wouldn’t. I have an idea that if you went back in time and say, killed Stalin, some other catastrophe would happen instead which would be far worse.
I think it’d be interesting to see what the world would be like if Marx were shot in 1832. By an errant pistol, of course. If you don’t want to off him, off Lenin. I do not really see how these deaths would hurt, though honestly if you’re going to remove the USSR, you’ll probably have to take out the Nazis as to prevent them from getting too strong in WW2.
Would the Reformation have occurred without Martin Luther, attacked and killed by secretly trained wolves in 1491? I don’t think the world would necessarily be better, but it sure would be different!
I think if Hitler hadn’t existed the Germany would raised someone else from anonymity in his stead. It was the times that made Hitler…he didn’t make the times. If it had not been for him who knows how much worse things could of gotten. If someone else had been leading Germany then maybe he wouldn’t of ignored the vast resources he had in the Jewish community and maybe even had gotten the atomic bomb before us.
I suspect you could make a similar argument for most any figures in history…any evil person from history “removed” from their time would simply be replaced by someone possibly much worse.
This world may not be perfect but it could be worse.
But it IS a tempting thought isn’t it?
I believe what I said above but I was wondering…what if you removed a GOOD figure from history? Would the reverse be true also…would someone else be thrust into the limelight as the new good person? Or is there an infinite amount of bad people and a finite amount of good ones? Perhaps because it’s so much easier to be bad than good?