If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?
I am going to be kind of a smart-ass here and go back to predetermination. If predetermination is true, and there is a divine being planning and controlling everything, then we could not even conceive of an answer to this prompt. If everything is predetermined, then even the worst events in history were somehow part of the plan.
A more practical approach for me is to assume that history is largely random, that things happen, people make choices, and those choices create consequences we could never fully predict.
There are plenty of horrific events we might wish we could change: the Holocaust, the Trail of Tears, Stalin’s Gulag system, the Holodomor, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, and countless others. But there is a problem with choosing just one.
History is a chain of events. Change one link, and everything that follows may change with it.
Erase one war, and perhaps you prevent millions of deaths. But perhaps you also prevent a political movement, a technological advancement, or a social change that eventually came from that war. Remove one political decision, and you may eliminate one tragedy while creating another that we cannot possibly anticipate.
That doesn’t make those events acceptable. It simply makes the question much harder than it appears.
The Holocaust is a particularly difficult example. Mao and Stalin’s policies resulted in enormous numbers of deaths, arguably more than the Holocaust alone. But the Holocaust occupies a different place in history because Nazi Germany developed a deliberate, systematic effort to identify, isolate, deport, and ultimately eliminate an entire people.
So if I were forced to erase one event from history, I honestly don’t know which one I would choose.
And maybe that’s the point of the question.
We can look backward with the knowledge we have now and identify things that were horrific, unjust, or profoundly wrong. But we don’t get to see the alternate history—the millions of decisions and consequences that would have followed if we had changed them.
Erasing history sounds simple.
Living with the consequences of changing it might not be.
Thanks for reading BeingKevin.
In a world built on scrolling past everything in seconds, I genuinely appreciate you stopping here for a moment. If the post gave you something to think about, made you laugh, or even made you disagree, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. A quick rating helps, too, and goes a long way toward supporting the site. And if you’d like to help keep BeingKevin going, a small tip is always appreciated — never expected, but deeply valued. Thanks again for being here
Leave a Reply