Imagine you exist in two realities.
In the first reality, you are walking alone to a party one night when you are attacked by a mugger and lose your wallet. You call the police and, upset, return home to recover, with no more than a few bruises.
In the second reality, just at the point the mugger is about to attack you, he's overwhelmed with guilt and changes his mind. Oblivious, you continue on to the party. You have too much to drink and when some stranger offers you a lift home you accept. He turns out to be a psycho and murders you...
In the first reality, the mugger has saved your life. But, as you will never know it, you hate that mother fucker. You are traumatised by the experience and resent this violent act. You become more right wing in your opinions and wish for longer and harsher punishments to be dealt out to criminals, and more coppers on the beat.
By doing so, maybe you will somehow twist some other person's fate in the wrong direction.
Hitler was evil, right? But how do we know the world would be a better place if he hadn't existed. If you could go back in time and had the opportunity to finish him off before he did any real damage, could you pull the trigger with total certainty that the future you returned to would be a nicer place to live?
Didn't Hitler actually bring about the almost total destruction of fascism, by uniting the free world against it? What if Hitler had died in WW1? Perhaps fascism would have crept more cleverly and insidiously to ultimate power and we could now still be under it's brutal thumb.
Who are we to play with fate?
So, next time someone wrongs you, before you curse their name, consider that they may have just done you a favour.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Can Evil Be Good?
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6 comments:
"If you could go back in time and had the opportunity to finish him off before he did any real damage, could you pull the trigger with total certainty that the future you returned to would be a nicer place to live?"
That would be very hard to do considering he had a giant army protecting him at all times. Assuming you did assassinate Hitler, the probability of getting out of there alive would be nil. Even then, Wherner Van Braun may have had a chance of joining up with the Soviets instead of the Americans, and that may have allowed them to win the space race. That would mean the USA would be the "USSR of A" and Mars might have been colonized by the Soviets way back in the 1980's. That's 1 possibility at least.
Wow, that's a lot of what-if's. Don't you know I ain't be smart enuff to think like dat?
You changed your site. Mine's still better.
You could go back to the end of WW1 - Hitler had no guard then.
Hi!
I strongly recommend Stephen Fry's novel "Making History", which fits your post staggeringly well :-) : an alternate history of WWII.
Thoroughly enjoyable (as is all of his work < /Fry fangirl>!
(from wiki) "Making History (1997) is the third novel by Stephen Fry. The plot involves the creation of an alternate history where Hitler never existed. The book won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History."
http://www.amazon.com/Making-History-Stephen-Fry/dp/1569471509
I think about this when a red light catches me. I've been thinking this for years. However, that's also given me the time to think that this kind of thing is relatively rare...I seriously doubt any red light or slow driver blocking my way saved me from paralysis, coma, or death. Possibl, but unlikely.
And, most likely the rise of Hitler to power didn't save us from a fate even worse. (What kind of hell on Earth could "justify" the holocaust?)
So although an evil event/person can serendipitously affect an individual, I wouldn't use this idea as a base principle. More like something to ease road rage.
Okay, think about this:
At some point in the distance roots of your family tree, it's quiet possible, if not probable, that some poor woman had sex forced upon her to create one of your ancestors.
If that "evil" act had not taken place, you would not now exist, or any of your family.
This thought came to me when I was thinking about the recent arrest of the man in Austria, who has kept his daughter locked in his cellar for 24 years and fathered 7 children with her. The horror of this experience for the daughter doesn't bear thinking about.
But again - if I could go back in time and prevent this, I would be 'killing' the 6 remaining children.
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