Selectively Juggling

If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?

Firstly I’d need to decide whether I’m focusing on one such event in my own personal life, or within greater society. Do I choose to bring some event that affected me, my family or fellow Australians, or do I zoom out even further and interrogate larger global events? Events that had more direct consequences elsewhere.

Where do I start? Events of mass destruction, famine, disease and political violence? Events like the birth of heinous villains? Or even still preventing the births of their bloodlines?

As I write this I wonder if simply stemming the flow of one such event would only create a new reality. A different reality where time, space and the universal energies simply morph and find a new way to be realised. Would preventing one such event, invariably have unforeseen consequences? Possibly leading to even more dire circumstances? Much like attempting to unweave an already intricately spun spider’s web? Too many things to consider, not to mention changing the course of history, and as such humanity’s ability to learn from such events. Yet, is that easy for me to write given my own privilege?

Where do I start? Individuals like Hitler? His parents? Simply removing him wouldn’t have stopped the violent march of his henchmen. They would have found a new poster boy for their evil sadistic hate fuelled crimes.

Would I stop a natural event? A famine, drought, flood? An earthquake or natural disaster? Which one? Which one had the most horrific long reaching effects on humanity? Do I look at Ethiopia, Mali – trying to stem the haemorrhaging of human life? Of civil war and unending suppression, violence and suffering?

Or do I step back and somehow change some event that completely wipes out all forms of colonisation and colonialism? Preventing lies like Terra Nullius from forming in the minds and on the lips of the English as they curated their way through the known world. Would that have prevented the violence, the displacement, dispossession and attempted genocides? Or would another coloniser simply have picked up the moniker? Perhaps leading to even worse outcomes?

What event? What victims do I prioritise? And how can I live with the consequences of my choice?

What constitutes historical? Is it a thousand years? A hundred? Ten? Yesterday?

And the other issue is that given history is recorded by the victor, the oppressors and dominant voices – surely I don’t have a complete unbiased, un-curated account of history, therefore my response is somewhat tainted. On those grounds I would have to select an event in modern/contemporary history – an event that was witnessed and observed by many, and recorded in a way to reflect multiple perspectives.

So what events have shaken me, or at very least I’ve felt (whether directly or victoriously) the human vibrations of loss and desperation? War? The rise of mandarin-coloured decrepit malignant narcissists, or the continued attempted genocides of peoples who had always belonged to ancient lands? Driven by greed and an abhorrent lust for world power? What about preventing cultural activities that violate young girls and women through mutilation, or child brides?

What about environmental degradation and destruction? Which event should I undo? The Industrial Revolution? But what will that do? What wonderful events, moments and discoveries will that prevent? Would the alternative reality be any better or worse? do I trace back the embryonic stages where capitalism started to emerge from its troubled chrysalis? That sounds like a good option, as so much human and environmental destruction has resulted from capitalist greed. Look around today, how is it possible that billionaires exist on the same timeline as families deep in famine, starvation and or medical distress? The same for the whole celebrity nonsense, since when are celebrities above everyone else? After all everyone has the same biological needs, yet some ride the porcelain or golden throne, whilst millions of others have no access to safe hygienic water and sanitation.

I couldn’t choose an historical event, as invariably I’d be disappointed that the effects of my decision would be short lived, or lead to a worse situation.

To be honest my focus would be to stem the flow of right-wing racism and oppression. Coupled with eradicating the creeping current of toxic masculinity. People are trying to bring back the vibe and energy of a past that was fuelled by fear, racism, ignorance, hatred and ideas of racial or gender superiority. The reality is all of that is bullshit – strip away all of the hate filled rhetoric – the social concepts of race and ethnicity and ideas of superiority. At the end of the day as our bodies lay to rest and our human bones lay glistening in the sunlight, tell me that we aren’t all the same.

It’s our choices and actions that make us who we are – so I would say that I would actually go back in time when humanity chose to get all serious and forgo research and development into the unknown – the possibility of what could be if we removed the blinkered vision of observable science. Who knows perhaps we could have given birth to ideas and tools that could have enabled us to go back and change, heal and reveal new ways of existing.