I'm not exactly sure why but somehow I found myself thinking about who the truly dangerous people are or were. I pretty quickly ruled out people like Billy The Kid and Jesse James. I mean they were dangerous but they really did not have all that much impact. I don't think guys like Al Capone or Pablo Escobar really threaten society at least not in any permanent way. You have to have some more long lasting impact to be truly dangerous.
The impact would have to be big and long lasting. Bin Laden had a big impact and it lasted pretty long. But you know what, he is pretty irrelevant now. He may have been done as a player before he was killed. Hitler and Stalin were dangerous to millions and their impact is probably still detectable but I doubt it is at all permanent.
I wound up deciding that people truly threatening to the social order wouldn't be a threat in any conventional sense. That's when the answers became obvious to me. The three most dangerous people in history had to be Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Each of these guys wound up permanently changing society. Each one overturned the existing social order. Their impact was permanent. No wonder all three wound being assassinated. They were truly dangerous.
Who's dangerous today? My vote goes to the Dalai Llama. I suppose there could be a mechanic somewhere who is altering reality one person at a time. People in recovery try to change the world by changing themselves. I think that just maybe if we changed our attitudes, and behavior we could be really dangerous!
Russell
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