Saturday 2 November 2024

Thank You Dead People

The World can seem an awful place what with wars, economic crashes and global pandemics but who should we blame for it all?
Dead people of course because a lot of long-dead famous people actually caused such massive and negative changes in their lifetimes that we still feel the ill-effect of their existence today.
Obviously Adolf Hitler (died 1945) is a main player because the atrocities he committed with the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930 and 40's made a great impact society, there are neo-Nazi parties and supporters still now despite knowing how horrific as the Holocaust was and because of his Genocide, Israel came about and and now being accused of performed their own against the Palestinians.
Marcion of Sinope (died 160ad) gathered together stories from all other religions at the time, copy and pasted the name of Jesus and God into them and created the Bible which has been used by some to vilify, denounce, condemn and murder millions and continues still today.
Charles Darwin (died 1882) made groundbreaking work on evolution in 1859 but religious groups still today, despite all the evidence, continue to deny and debate it and in some American schools it has been pushed for creation science and not evolution to be taught in schools.
Henry VIII (died 1547)  is famous for many things but beheading wives didn't make their lasting impact of his decision to break away from the Catholic Church and set in motion the conflict Between Catholics And Protestants In Ireland which continues today.
James Madison (died 1836) was the the US President and his bright idea was to proposed and then write the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution back in 1791 and now America has more gun dealers than McDonald's & Starbucks combined and not by accident, the most mass gun shootings with 40,000 gun deaths each year.   
Dr. John Smith Pemberton (died 1888) gave the world Coca-Cola which also led to an increase in obesity, tooth loss and chronic illnesses related to sugar over consumption but the worst legacy from a  long dead person has to be Thomas Midgley Jnr who died in 1944 after leaving us not only with the decision to put lead in petrol but came up with the bright idea of CFC's for air conditioning and refrigeration systems which depleted the Ozone layer so badly that the World had to ban both his inventions and the Ozone layer, that thing which shields all living things from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation,
After 70 years of every car in the world using lead petrol which threw thousands of millions tonnes of lead into the atmosphere and then depleting the ozone layer with CFC's, the argument could be made that Thomas Midgely, through environmental changing actions, has been responsible for more human deaths than any other single person in history.


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