Also, on erasure: I wouldn't want to choose a political figure, even someone like Hitler, partly because I believe movements are too closely identified with their leaders, but also because the unintended consequences would be significant. Likewise I wouldn't want to choose a terrorist or a mass murderer because for the most part those crimes are either closely identified with a larger movement, or have given us better insight into diseases that strike more than one person. Assassins are good choices, and among assassins I think you need to select clear lone gunmen rather than men (such as JFK, RFK, and King's killers) who rest at the center of large conspiracy theories. Not just because the conspiracy, if it was real, can select another figurehead, but because so much social change rests on the deaths of those figures.
Basically, you don't want to choose to undo something, or someone, obviously evil, because of the potential for corresponding positive social change coming out of that evil. Rather, I think it's best to choose to undo something sad but not sweepingly evil.
So: on that basis, I'd consider choosing Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon. He acted alone, and he killed an otherwise beloved figure. The obvious trade-off of sparing Lennon's life that day is the significant possibility of real, and perhaps positive, change to popular music, versus much of the curious mystique around The Catcher in the Rye, a book Chapman was obsessed with, a theme which has featured heavily in the film Conspiracy Theory, and in the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Lennon might have changed a lot had he lived, and would have been an overtly counteracting force against the conformist pressures of the 80s. Chapman, in his post-assassination life, hasn't created the same kind of social change that, for example, Mumia Abu-Jamal has.
I think ultimately this is a question about how one sees risk versus reward; I think my answer strikes a balance there I'm comfortable with.
Basically, you don't want to choose to undo something, or someone, obviously evil, because of the potential for corresponding positive social change coming out of that evil. Rather, I think it's best to choose to undo something sad but not sweepingly evil.
So: on that basis, I'd consider choosing Mark David Chapman, the man who shot and killed John Lennon. He acted alone, and he killed an otherwise beloved figure. The obvious trade-off of sparing Lennon's life that day is the significant possibility of real, and perhaps positive, change to popular music, versus much of the curious mystique around The Catcher in the Rye, a book Chapman was obsessed with, a theme which has featured heavily in the film Conspiracy Theory, and in the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Lennon might have changed a lot had he lived, and would have been an overtly counteracting force against the conformist pressures of the 80s. Chapman, in his post-assassination life, hasn't created the same kind of social change that, for example, Mumia Abu-Jamal has.
I think ultimately this is a question about how one sees risk versus reward; I think my answer strikes a balance there I'm comfortable with.
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