Today is the anniversary of two cataclysms, the Sack of Rome in 1527 and the explosion of the Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937. Both were sudden and somewhat unexpected, though there were hints of what was to come – Rome had been sacked before (in 410) and a string of other hydrogen-filled airships had already crashed and burned.
Still, one always hopes for the best and an optimistic soul is surprised when things turn out otherwise.
In our time, the Hindenburg is a better-known calamity, but only because there isn’t compelling footage of the Sack of Rome.
Historians say the Sack of Rome marked the end of Italy’s High Renaissance, and significantly pushed forward the protestant reformation. The Hindenburg disaster called an abrupt end to the development of rigid airships – most certainly those filled with hydrogen.
So it goes.
Although we try to prevent catastrophic events and want to have some positive influence over the great changes that sweep over our world, it often feels that we are stuck in the role of an interested, but powerless, observer. Perhaps this explains the popularity of parallel-world games like Minecraft, where one can start from scratch and construct an environment with just a few elements, an assortment of building blocks, and a blank canvas.
You could take advantage of this technology to try to build a make-believe world without Kings, Armies, Popes, Nazis and New Jersey. But you’d still probably need gravity, fire, hunger, ambition and hydrogen.
Things might turn out pretty much the same.
If you could erase any moment in history, which one would you choose?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. There is a hugh number of things that have gone wrong in our history that would be good to change. I don’t even want to try to pick one out of the many massively wrong things that have made the world a mess. I will stick to one that I think would make the world better place and is not too earth shaking.
Commercial board casting. I am thinking mostly about TV. Radio could also be included. Sure, there is some good commercial broad casting. However, there is so much bad commercial stuff that I think we would be better off with only public TV and radio and no commercial board casting. That’s the best suggestion I can come with on this Monday morning.
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Well, I guess I can’t really say that there is a moment in history that started commercial board casting. Perhaps the first board cast that was sponsored by a commercial would be my choice if I could find out when that happened.
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it is an interesting question. over the weekend last weekend i discoivered ted radio had taken the place of something on mpr sunday night line up. i really like ted but it was on at 6 up against 60 minutes. so i went to the podcast site and there it was. the one i chose to listen to after 60 minutes while i was out doing yard work ( love sunlight til 8) was one about fighting and it talked about how we all assume that now is the most violent time in the history of man wen if you look at it historically the other eras have had more killing and evil going on. we have better news coverage today but the huns, the crusades, the civil war, were all at least as bad. i think the slave ship era had to be one of the worst. it is unimaginable that we as a country allowed people families cultures to be destroyed and sold as goods is mindboggling. under what circumstances would that be ok? if you have a job and need cheap labor go and kidnap a group of people and solve your shortage. unbelievable. lets just go back and fix that one for starters.
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A bad situation we are currently facing is the way American Presidents lie to the public to get us involved in warfare. I heard over the weekend that Polk might have been one of the first Presidents to do this when told a lie to justify the start of the Mexican-American war.
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yeah i saw that one too. happy cinca da mayo
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i know kurt vonnegut would have no question.
http://rense.com/general19/flame.htm
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RISE AND SHINE BABOONS!
I am torn between removing WWII and the Jewish Holocaust or the development of High School in the US as a form of education (and I do not believe it educates teens. It just creates an environment for negative peer pressure–one of those unintended consequences).
But then, if you read Stephen King’s book about removing JFK’s assassination, he plays with the idea that you always have unintended consequences, even when the removed event was traumatic.
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I have a particular fascination with books in which a significant bit of history changes… like King’s book. One that I particularly enjoyed was one in which someone goes back in time and keeps Hitler from being born. In the book it turns out that some of Hitler’s top henchmen were actually WORSE than Hitler.. unintended consequences.
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I’d like to perhaps not erase, but smudge up a bit instead, the decisions made by early Christian church leaders to exclude certain books form the “canon” (and therefore, the bible as we know it). Also, that whole centuries old decision about women not being leaders in the church, that can go, too. Whole bunches of things went awry, I think, because of later decisions based on those earlier ones…maybe if we had Thomas’ loopy writing in with Paul’s letters (or in place of Revelation – since that one gets misused a lot), a lot of our less than stellar moments in history would be different.
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Like most book lovers, I would stop the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Stopping the Spanish from invading the Americas and the British from turning Australia into a penal colony would probably also be good ideas, considering the near-genoicide of the indigenous populations and the ecological destruction that followed. But the thing I’d like most to stop–which probably couldn’t be done without redesigning humans from the ground up, but omelets and eggs–is the invention of rape.It’ll be the first of my three wishes.
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What an interesting post. I’m not sure rape was ever “invented,” but it sure is a dreadful thing. I’m going to look up the destruction of that library, as I haven’t heard of it.
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CG- are you familiar with the author, Steve Berry? He writes thrillers in a somewhat parallel reality, and has one in which the Library of Alexandria still exists, although in a secret location:
http://steveberry.org/books/the-alexandria-link/synopsis/
Not sure if this would be your cup of tea, but I enjoy his work.
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Sounds fascinating… they have it in the Hennepin system.
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My answer to this interesting question is somewhat egocentric. In spite of the fact I successfully dodged the draft, I experienced the Vietnamese war as a great personal tragedy. The war radicalized me and made me cynical about government. It also began the process of making many Americans cynical about authority, for during the eleven years of war people came to be bitter and suspicious about just about any major institution in our society. For example, a great many Americans are suspicious of any claims made by scientists, and at least some of that is due to the way all authorities and institutions lost respect in the great debates about the Vietnamese war.
Of course, I hate that war for the fact it was so unnecessary and destructive. In addition to all the lives lost in the fighting (on both sides) there were other atrocities such as the use of napalm and Agent Orange. I have a friend dying of cancer, and I just learned that he thinks his cancer started with his contact with Agent Orange.
Mostly I regret the way the war twisted American society. Lyndon Johnson wanted to be Franklin Roosevelt, and he had inexhaustible energy for correcting the great ills of poverty and injustice. All of that was lost in the chaos and bitterness created by the war. A great many things that are wrong with America now started or were exacerbated by that horrible war.
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Steve – the Vietnam War was also a painful watershed for me. The older brothers of two friends died in the war – they were the first people that I knew who died and it was very traumatic. To this day, I still don’t watch movies about Vietnam…. not a one.
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This is also not an event, but might have been a moment, the first time that a human looked at another human’s “stuff” and thought/said “I need that. I’m going to fight you for that.”
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that darn eve
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a personal favortite
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Oh boy! what a thing to consider. I would worry that if I changed something I would upset some important balance in the universe that would really mess everything up. Consider what we have done to “improve” nature (such as introducing foreign species like rabbits to Australia) that has just wrecked the environment and upset the balance. This is a similar sort of problem. It also puts forward the issue of whether one believes in a deity or not, and should one meddle or just cope with what gets thrown at us. Thanks a lot, Dale! Such heavy philosophical matters for a Monday!
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makes me think of the adam and eve story.
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One thing I’d like to erase is the adam and eve story.
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Hear, hear!
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OT – Lisa, did you see the great review of Out of the Pan Into the Fire in today’s Pioneer Press? Link to it on my FB wall.
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I’ve seen too much sci-fi to ever contemplate messing with the time-space continuum, there are just way too many unintended consequences there.
That said, I do find myself often wishing no atomic bomb had ever been dropped. That genii is not going back in the bottle, and I cannot completely convince myself that those are going to be the only 2 ever deployed.
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Rather than take out a particular conflict, what if we removed the invention of gunpowder? How different would the world be? I’m counting on a good effect from interrupting the sequence – no gunpowder equals no napalm or atomic bomb, either. Am I being naive? I suppose we’d still be whacking at each other with broad swords.
On second thought, I’ll side with Jim. Let’s obliterate television.
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Only downside I can see to “no gunpowder” is potentially “no fireworks.” My dog would be happier without fireworks, and I could live without them I suppose, but they sure are pretty…
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oh, but I cannot think the world would be a better place without the likes of Julia Child and Nora Batty……..
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Hey all — sorry I’ve been off the trail recently. I had a 5-day weekend and spent most of it cleaning, organizing, sitting in my garage on Saturday (garage sale — thirty-three degrees, ick). Today teenager and I did errands all day long (11 stops).
There are so many good answer here. I’d like to sweep them all up into one category, “Baboon Changes” and make that category my choice. And I think that if we’re going to do fantasy here on the trail, we can fantasize that none of our changes would have any catastrophic unintended consequences!!
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Way to go.
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So, what would a baboon utopia look like?
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