End of 2024 Random Musings: Napoleon, Running in North Carolina, Having Kids, Resolutions
A stream of consciousness, perhaps, but recently, I’ve been less consistent with my Medium writing, so I’ll share a few unrelated thoughts that crossed my mind:
Napoleon
I watched the movie Napoleon (from 2023, with Joaquin Phoenix) this weekend. My son, who just turned thirteen, is into history and picked this movie — it seemed like a good piece of entertainment. And it was. After watching it, I reflected, not for the first time, on this topic: does the passage of time erase the perception of cruelty associated with some famous leaders? Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon — we read about their conquests in history books, but the understanding of the destruction and death they caused seems muted, and dulled.
In a thousand years, will the world perceive the horrors of the Holocaust as we do now? Or will it feel like just another distant episode buried in the annals of history — like reflecting on the guillotine executions during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror, or dismissively recalling this or that massacre, or the 50,000 deaths in some forgotten battle? Will Hitler be remembered as a villain, or simply as someone who tried to conquer Europe? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect history has a way of softening the horrors and suffering tied to certain events over time.
