09-20-2005, 10:47 AM | #1 |
Elven Warrior
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Greatest Social Impact
Which of the last century's social leaders would you say had the largest impacts on todays world as we know it? (positive or negative)
Ghandi Dr. Martin Luther King jr. Susan B. Anthony Adolf Hitler Nelson Mandella Lenin Ho Chi Minh Freud Einstein etc etc... |
09-20-2005, 11:36 AM | #2 |
An enigma in a conundrum
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you have a mixed bag of politicians, dictators, thinkers and 'rights' people....IMO not all fit into the category "social leaders".
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09-20-2005, 12:19 PM | #3 |
Advocatus Diaboli
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ghandi, fdr and hitler
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09-20-2005, 12:25 PM | #4 |
of the House of Fëanor
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Che Guevara
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09-20-2005, 12:28 PM | #5 |
An enigma in a conundrum
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How about Susan B. Anthony for a SOCIAL leader? Womens rights created an entirely new society and it started with her.....basically.
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09-20-2005, 12:34 PM | #6 |
Lady of Letters
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In the US, perhaps. Not in the world as a whole.
IMO, social change isn't usually brought about by individuals alone, unlike other kinds of change (political, technological etc). That said, I nominate Hitler and Lenin/Stalin, simply because of the huge effects their actions had on millions of people in the twentieth century.
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
09-20-2005, 12:43 PM | #7 |
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No, not in the US necessarily, but in the other Americas - central & south - and it's a shame he was murdered by the c.i.a., because he was awfully young when he died, before he could REALLY shake things up and cause social reform.
Hmmm. Let's see... Henry Ford, and Oppenheimer?
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09-20-2005, 01:52 PM | #8 | |
Quasi Evil
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Quote:
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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09-20-2005, 01:59 PM | #9 |
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
The following excerpt taken from "A Science Odyssey," an online article... On July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer witnessed the first explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. "We knew the world would not be the same," he said. Within a month, two atomic bombs were dropped on Japanese cities. Japan surrendered on August 10, 1945. Absorbed in his studies and the theoretical world of physics, he was often somewhat distracted from the "real world." But the rise of fascism in the 1930s caught his attention, and he took a strong stand against it. By 1939, Niels Bohr brought news to the U.S. that Germans had split the atom. The implication that the Nazis could develop extremely powerful weapons prompted President Roosevelt to establish the Manhattan Project in 1941. In June 1942, Robert Oppenheimer was appointed its director. After the war, Oppenheimer chaired the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He opposed developing an even more powerful hydrogen bomb. When President Truman finally approved it, Oppenheimer did not argue, but his initial reluctance and the political climate turned against him. In 1953, at the height of U.S. anticommunist feeling, Oppenheimer was accused of having communist sympathies, and his security clearance was taken away. He had, in fact, had friends who were communists, mostly people involved in the antifascist movement of the thirties. This loss of security clearance ended Oppenheimer's influence on science policy. He held the academic post of director of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, and in the last years of his life, he thought and wrote much about the problems of intellectual ethics and morality. He died of throat cancer in 1967.
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09-20-2005, 02:05 PM | #10 | |
Lady of Letters
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Quote:
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
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09-20-2005, 02:08 PM | #11 | |
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Quote:
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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09-20-2005, 06:50 PM | #12 |
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Spock - are you speaking to me?
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Last edited by Spock : 09-20-2005 at 07:49 PM. |
09-20-2005, 07:00 PM | #13 |
An enigma in a conundrum
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все не по мере того как оно кажется
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Vizzini: "HE DIDN'T FALL?! INCONCEIVABLE!!" Inigo: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Last edited by Spock : 09-20-2005 at 10:21 PM. |
09-21-2005, 03:10 AM | #14 |
The Original Corruptor
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David Hasselhoff.
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09-21-2005, 01:15 PM | #15 |
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Albert Einstein
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
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09-21-2005, 01:18 PM | #16 |
Advocatus Diaboli
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great one
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Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. |
09-21-2005, 03:23 PM | #17 |
Elf Lord
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Alexander Fleming: the penicillin dude.
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09-21-2005, 03:30 PM | #18 |
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Fleming is a good call - here is his biography -
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laure...eming-bio.html
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Few people have the imagination for reality.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
09-21-2005, 03:54 PM | #19 |
Elf Lord
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Cool, thanks for that.
I guess I have a bit of a medical bias; another one would be Sir Richard Doll who discovered that smoking is bad for your ass. Doubly biased because I met him a couple of times and he was a charming old chap. Died just this year. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3826939.stm |
09-21-2005, 07:45 PM | #20 |
"The Bomb"
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This reminds me, Simon Wiesenthal is dead.
Who had the largest impact on today's world as we know it. Hitler most definately affected the world, but I don't think he actually changed the way societies think as much as Einstein or Freud did. By that I mean, the world already knew and believed that racism, baby-killing, and all else that he represented was wrong; he merely exemplified that and reinforced our beliefs. In altering our history, he is unrivaled, but I think Freud and Einstien had more affect on our methods of thought. And I'm sure I'm biased toward Freud, but still I think his theories are more relevant to everyday life, and therefor society in general. I'm'a go with Freud. EDIT: I love Dilbert.
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