![]() ![]() Some people want to be historically significant, but to be historically significant is not necessarily a good thing. This is why, for example, the invention of the zipper is less important than the discovery of penicillin. So the difference has to be one that matters, a difference in things we value (and disvalue): human flourishing, justice, suffering, death, and so forth. In one sense, that would make a difference on a grand scale, but, amusing at it may be, this prank won’t make you historically significant. Suppose, for example, that by a simple act you could make billions of people eat their dinner starting from the left side of the plate rather than the right. One way to think about historical significance is in terms of making a difference: things are more significant if they make a greater difference-a difference, presumably, compared to how things would have been otherwise. What makes something historically significant? We have an intuitive grasp of this notion, but it is not so easy to explain what exactly such significance involves. It is certainly a sad fact about our world that one of the easiest ways for someone to become historically significant is for them to assassinate a major political figure. It is often said that it is easier to destroy than to create. He acquired historical significance to a degree he could not have imagined. But in that single fatal act, this very ordinary man made a massive difference. Princip was no Napoleon or Hitler, let alone a Mandela or Ghandi. Few of us have even a real shot at being a historical footnote, or a footnote to such a footnote. ![]() For most of us, this is nearly impossible. Some people dream of being historically significant, of making a difference on a grand scale. Without World War I, there would have been no World War II, the Holocaust, as well as no Rape of Nanking, and no Hiroshima and Nagasaki… Without it, there probably would have been no Russian Revolution, and therefore no Stalinism and Gulags, perhaps no Maoism and the Great Leap Forward, or the killing fields in Cambodia. It was almost certainly the precondition to many of the horrors of the 20 th Century. The First World War has been described as the calamity that led to all the other calamities. In those few breathless minutes, history had taken a different, more sinister turn. Millions died in the trenches, and the map of Europe was redrawn. This triggered a chain of events that would soon lead to the Great War. Princip took out his gun and shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife from point blank range. It happened to stop just in front of Gavrilo Princip, a would-be assassin. Just over a hundred years ago, a car took a wrong turn. ![]()
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