Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

FewYou6643 t1_j1a9wml wrote

I'm trying to evaluate the weight of certain historical events and their impact on our lives as we know it today...

Is it fair to say that, if for example, had William the Conqueror not conquered Britain in 1066, then many Brits alive today would not have come into existence? In other words, it disrupted life to such an extent that if it had not happened, our ancestral parents would never have met, and we'd have a completely different set of "people" in existence today.

1

TheIrises t1_j1cb2is wrote

Man that is a loaded question. It’s the whole butterfly effect when regarded to history.

You can always ask these questions, but at a point it is too much. It’s like asking “What would have happened if World War One didn’t occur?” Well perhaps World War Two wouldn’t have occurred, but could a different war had occurred? We wouldn’t know and we could argue for days and get nowhere.

Every single event in history made the world today. The better question to ask is how did each event lead to new technologies and how did they lead to new events, rather than asking what would have happened if something didn’t occur. If William the Conqueror had not conquered Britain would the Anglo-Saxons be in power? We could continue to ask the questions but we wouldn’t know because more events would occur after that which would continue to reshape the world.

So yes, you can ask them, but the question is, should you?

2