I have written many posts on philosophy over the years, today however, I felt like taking a different approach to the old problem. Where do we fit in history ? Does the actions of a single individual really make a difference ? What about long after we’re dead ? Well… maybe we can calculate that using mathematics.

Of course, since I’m not writing a PHD paper here, I’ll be using a few (fair) assumptions, which can be questioned, but I believe that – for the vast majority of cases, my postulation will stand up to scrutiny.

So let’s first think of how we might calculate the actual impact a person may have had on history, as measured at any given point. Let’s call our hypothetical person: Sarah. How much impact did Sarah have on the world ? Well, one way to estimate that would be to find out, at any given moment: how many people alive right now wishes Sarah had never died (or if she’s still alive, that she’d remain so forever), call this value (A). Then, we subtract the number of people who wishes she had never been born (call this B). For most people – the values of both these would be at their highest either sometime during their lives when they do something most impactful – or right after their deaths. With each passing year, both A and B will decrease – as people die and forget, some will tell their children though – so the decrease isn’t absolute.

If we say that Y starts as A-B, and Time is X, then, since there is direct inverse proportion between X and Y (over time the number of people who have any opinion at all of Sarah’s life reduces) there is a very standard function that we can plot here: Y=1/X – the function for an inverse proportion. But this function, by itself, does not consider the case where B is bigger than A. That function has the starting value of Y as a negative amount. So we should plot that with the function:
Y=-1/X (which is the direct polar opposite graph).
So the graph of peoples impact on the world is pretty much always somewhere on these lines:

The Red line shows us the impact of a person who had a high starting value for A and a low starting value for B. The green line shows us a high B and a low A person.
If we use today as a the value of X, then right noow Ghandi and Nelson Mandela is probably right at the very top of the Red line at this moment. Hitler would be near the very bottom of the green line. George Busch and HF Verwoerd just a little higher on the same line.
With each passing day though – the lines get smaller, no matter how far away from zero your line starts – it always approaches it on a long enough timeline. Today – even though almost all of us still know the name of Alexander the Great, hardly anybody really has an opinion on whether we’re glad he lived anymore… yet a few of us do (historians mostly, trying to work out if his impact on history ultimately benefited mankind or not).
The point is though – for no life, no matter how big or small it starts out as – on this function – ever reaches zero. The only way that could happen, is if it starts at zero. Which is pretty much only possible if you were an orphan who became a hermit at the age of 6.
So your life has an impact that spreads throughout the entirety of history from the moment you were born onwards. The impact of your actions influences the world. The influence could be small or big, but it’s never non-existent. And over time, the impact dimishes, but it never goes away. Hitler may not be putting anybody in concentration camps anymore, but the fact that he once did radically changed the world and we still live in many of those changes.
Your life matters. If your life has a largely positive effect on the people around you – the remnants of that effect will last until the end of time, ditto if you had a largely negative effect.
We have very little opportunity to change the size of A and B (though we call get a few), but we sure can determine whether A is bigger than B or not… in other words, you can choose if your line in history is green or red – and the choice matters, because the line never, ever gets to zero.

So…. I saw this blog post today. While my known views on censorship says, it should not be removed – they also include that it should be, well shouted down.
I haven’t read anything so filled with thinly-veiled racism as this in years, and choice phrases like “low-class” and “uncivilized” just hammer it home.
I mean “low-class” – not only does this person seem to hanker back to the days when cultural supremeism was acceptable, she seems to actually hanker back to the days of the class system. I guess it’s easy to think what surname you were born with should determine your destiny if you were born wealthy and white right ?!
Well, I was too- and I don’t approve of it. The thought that somebody is somehow special by virtue of his birth (rather than say, his efforts) fills my stomach with bile. But I suppose I can see the point… after all the class system was a such a huge success right ?

But I suppose it just goes to show, intolerance come with ignorance. Now let’s just say some things outright. Ask any actual scientist and they will outright refute the concept of “primitive cultures” – there aren’t any. There haven’t been for a thousand years. Those “other cultures” are just as advanced as ours, as they too – live in 2009. When we got here, they were also just as advanced as ours were then. They’re development had taken a different course, but they were exactly as developed as we were. It’s against the laws of physics for it to have been or ever be any other way.

If you were to work by “when was the culture established” to calculate age… that made them about one hundred years more “advanced” of course, but let’s not cloud the issue, or even get into the simple genetically verifiable fact that everybody on earth descends from black people in (Southern I may add) Africa.

In short every single philosophical premise on which her complaint is based has been utterly and completely proven false over the past few centuries, and yet she clings to them with the desperation of one who utterly needs to justify her sense of superiority. I can only assume that she has done nothing in her life to take any pride in, otherwise – she wouldn’t feel the need to seek her pride in culture or race (things she didn’t do anything to deserve)…
If she’s a Christian, perhaps we could venture that she should consider the phrase “there but for the grace of God…” but frankly, these kinds of believers will find superiority in even that, as if the fact that God’s grace DIDN’T put her there is somehow a reflection of herself rather than of Him…

Well the reality is Anne, that your lack of tolerance for other cultures and your lack of respect for other peoples ways – and your insistence on forcing your own cultures norms, morals and manners down everyone’s throaght makes you inferior in my book -nothing more than a target for mockery. Not because of your birth, but because of your behavior and deliberate self-induced ignorance. In other words, while you perceive others as inferior based on their birth, I perceive you as inferior based on your actions. To put it even more succinctly: unlike the people you write about – you DESERVE to be labelled inferior. You actually DID things and SAID things to deserve it.
You chose to cling to dead ideas, you chose to judge people by the value system of a culture other than their own- and then feel smug when they didn’t live up to it… of these things are wars and inhumane crimes made… of these things were holocaust made.

It’s been said that you have the right to your own opinions but not to your own facts. A saying I often quote and find very dear. Well Anne, I answered your ridiculous and insulting opinions with facts to prove them wrong – and a straight assessment of why holding them is an inditement on yourself. The good news about people like me, who judge by actions, is that the judgement of scorn and mockery you earned can be reversed. If you show an openminded willingness to consider how terribly wrong you are, I will praise you for it with the same fervor and vigor with which I scorn your current close-mindedness… the choice Anne, is entirely up to you.