The Worst Thing

In a novel I’m reading, a character poses the question “What’s the worst thing that ever happened?” The answer is “The Holocaust.” And since I’ve just come off watching the “World At War” series on dvd, I find that’s not an inappropriate reply. The fact that a madman was able to sell an entire country on his racist agenda and undertake the cold-blooded extermination of six million Jews – more than 11 million people in all if you count Hitler’s other “undesirables” – undoubtedly qualifies as the most horrendous event in human history. And while there have been other genocides, none have been pursued to such extremes. Stir in the fact that the perpetrators were supposedly civilized twentieth-century Europeans from a country that had made significant contributions to Western culture, hardly “barbarians” like Pol Pot, and it’s even more grisly.

But is it the worst thing that ever happened?

Genocides are events, set pieces in history. 9/11 is another – pretty horrendous, but still overshadowed by what the Nazis did. What had been the worst thing before the Holocaust? The senseless slaughter in the trenches of WWI? It’s all a matter of perspective; maybe Asians or South Americans would point to something else.

But “worst things” can be turning points instead of events. Think of things with less horror but longer lasting repercussions: the invention of the internal combustion engine and the double whammy of its effect on the atmosphere and demand for oil ... the decision of the Roman Catholic Church to forbid birth control and its impact on overpopulation in the third world ... the introduction of the slave trade to North America and its consequences for American history and society ... the creation of the atomic bomb, with immediate horror to be sure and producing years of anxiety for those of us who were taught to “duck and cover,” but whose worst implications may even lie ahead....  (Readers, feel free to submit other suggestions.)

So a horrendous occurrence may be shocking, but the impact of a decision or invention can be just as harmful in the long run. And we may not even know how devastating they are until it’s too late. But lack of decision can also have an impact – and with that in mind, I would like to nominate for “worst thing in the world” the fact that human beings haven’t yet outgrown the fairy tale of “God.” There’s no specific event, no turning point. But the fact that we still lead countries in His name, kill in His name, even hate fags in His name, and then wonder why He doesn’t intervene in wars and genocides makes us not much more enlightened than our “uncivilized” ancestors.