Mmmm. Nuance. It is generally less the focus that FF getting shot CAUSED the war than it said that FF getting shot is the CATALYST for the war.
The distinction is this: you do not automatically turn into an alcoholic when you get divorced. There is no process of biology or physics that makes that a certainty of life. So let’s say that you’re married for 10 years and you’ve lived your life without being an alcoholic. You get divorced and you become an alcoholic. Lots of people get divorced without becoming alcoholics. They have support systems in place, perhaps do not have access to or do not partake in alcohol, they may know coping skills or, while divorce is often unpleasant, they are otherwise content and do not feel a desire to drink to excess. They may not have the genetic predisposition etc. so if you become an alcoholic after a life event- like divorce- the factors for you to become an alcoholic pre existed. It may be that had you never been divorced etc. you never would have..
.. become an alcoholic, or you may have always been on an inevitable path towards alcoholism and your marriage or a lack of the emotional and mental state brought by divorce sped up your trip. Regardless, if you throw a ball the ball travels on the path you set it on until something acts upon the ball to change its trajectory. Generally speaking a person doesn’t wake up one day and decide that they’ve been kind their whole life but from now on will be a horrible person unless either they have had some chronic suffering and have reached a “breaking point” or some change has occurred in their environment that leads them to change. Countries generally don’t go from peace to war on a whim, there are underlying factors but if those factors remain the same, there usually isn’t a war, just tension. That tension is because all the factors exist for war if one singular factor changes. WW1 may have occurred regardless or may never have occurred if not for the assassination of FF, but that..
.. event was a catalyst which set in motion a chain in which the pre existing factors led to a situation where no one stopped it. It is in theory at least, very simple to avoid war. In practice, psychology and politics and human nature and relationships make it more complex.
Most people see it as an excuse to kick-start the war, rather than a catalyst.
A catalyst would be something that one has less control over the motion it carries, but we had plenty of time to back off and resume peace.
The kaiser had other ideas though, and us getting involved was us refusing to flex our muscle anymore and just start punching.
It's more difficult to talk about how easily you're gonna knock out the champ, and convince people that it's true, than it is to prove it.
Hmmm… a touch of semantics but I concede that perhaps catalyst is not the best word to use, or perhaps at the least may not hold a clear enough distinction for everyone. If one is looking for an excuse than that which provides excuse would be a precipitating factor- but we will agree on the fact that regardless of choice of words that in essence- the entire matter could have been avoided but a host of factors had created so for ions in which some simply needed a reason to go to war for conflict to begin, and the political and circumstantial realities and outlooks took over from there.
"Quite simply, it was too much effort NOT to have a war..."
The distinction is this: you do not automatically turn into an alcoholic when you get divorced. There is no process of biology or physics that makes that a certainty of life. So let’s say that you’re married for 10 years and you’ve lived your life without being an alcoholic. You get divorced and you become an alcoholic. Lots of people get divorced without becoming alcoholics. They have support systems in place, perhaps do not have access to or do not partake in alcohol, they may know coping skills or, while divorce is often unpleasant, they are otherwise content and do not feel a desire to drink to excess. They may not have the genetic predisposition etc. so if you become an alcoholic after a life event- like divorce- the factors for you to become an alcoholic pre existed. It may be that had you never been divorced etc. you never would have..
A catalyst would be something that one has less control over the motion it carries, but we had plenty of time to back off and resume peace.
The kaiser had other ideas though, and us getting involved was us refusing to flex our muscle anymore and just start punching.
It's more difficult to talk about how easily you're gonna knock out the champ, and convince people that it's true, than it is to prove it.