Human Resilience

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

– Arundhati Roy

This article originally appeared in the publication A Layman's Future

Crisis is catnip to the entrepreneurial mind. It provides a focal point — a magnet for ideas that can help counter it. Depending on their scale, crises are excellent at building conduits of problem-solving and entrepreneurial energy to solve, and in many cases, profit from effective innovation.

If history is any indicator, there are currently two sets of people out there amidst all the COVID-19 chaos that has engulfed the world: those who are worried about the impact this crisis will have on their existing lives, livelihoods and business operations, and those who understand that this crisis — regardless of its impact — is temporary, and that after the dust has settled, will force the human race into a new world where several rules of today no longer apply.

This is exciting, and is exactly what opportunity looks like. It’s a break in the status quo that is either created slowly and organically or is forced upon us, demanding to be solved.

Since December 31st, 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has wreaked global havoc in a way that many did not expect was possible in our modern world, given our collective ability to predict everything from asteroid impacts on earth to individual buying behaviour for specific products. If a vendor sitting out of rural Rwanda with a team of less than 3 people can use global technology infrastructure to understand the appeal of their product in the country-side of southern France with just a few taps of their finger, how did we get to this point? Couldn’t we have detected the virus immediately after it affected its first victim, automatically fired up the necessary infrastructure to handle information flows globally, alerted all authorities entrusted to intervene in these situations and contained the virus’s exponential spread?

We could have, but didn’t, because while our technology has evolved to be fantastic at collecting, storing and analysing information, it’s not (yet) great at acting on it independently and intelligently. For this kind of functionality (and for the kinds of interventions we needed here), it still critically depends on responsible human behaviour, effective information sharing agreements, fewer geo-political roadblocks and a fundamental belief in the authenticity of the information we receive. None of these came through in the ways they should have, leading to this surreal global shutdown we're all in now.

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But I would argue that all is not lost. Far from it, this could be the wake up call the world needs to reprioritise and refocus, and this is what this article is about.

[I want to make it abundantly clear that my intention is not in any way to minimise the seriousness of this virus or its effects, but rather to squeeze out any learning we can get from it and to put it in perspective so we can all start feeling a little more hopeful about the future.]

Ridiculous as it sounds, the COVID-19 crisis is barely a blip on the radar when previous crises the world has gone through are considered. Here’s an illustration of what I mean:

Of course, it could be much worse, and the fact that it isn’t could be evidence that our learnings from previous crises have helped prepare us for this one (some more than others) and made us more resilient.

But is this true?

Ideally, this would be true if we consistently see a pattern of crisis leading to a more evolved thought process that trains us to spot its cause in the future — or at least more effectively guard against it if it comes back around. This led me to comb through the web to try and understand this relationship between crisis and advancement in more depth. Obviously, research for a topic like this really has no defined end, so what I focused on was two categories of crises — economic and medical — and four parts of human life where advancement could have manifested itself: Food, Settlement, Medicine and any underlying Technologies or tools.

Even with very sincere efforts at being brief, this crowded picture was the best I could manage (if you’re the kind of person, like me, who likes to geek out about how events in the past led us to where we are now, this picture was made with you in mind — leave your comments below and let me know what you think worked and what didn’t!)

Let’s look at a few of these events in particular and dive in a bit more:

The Black Death (1347 — 1351, and then several recurrences till the early 18th century):

The Black Death was the most devastating pandemic in human history. Bacterial in nature, the Black Death claimed 75 — 200 million lives globally including around 50% of Europe’s population, which meant that the continent took 200 years to reach pre-plague population levels again.

Eerily similar in origins, the Black Death originated in Central or East Asia, and travelled via trade routes along the Silk Road to Europe and the West — most probably carried by fleas living on black rats. Eerier still, Italy, Spain and France were among the most affected countries in Europe, while the Hubei province in China also lost approximately 80% of its population.

One of the reasons the Black Death was so devastating was because of how archaic and unscientific its detection and treatment methods were. Indeed, plagues were seen as acts of God, rather than sicknesses, and so religious remedies and devotional acts such as flagellation and penitent pilgrimages were thought to be one’s best chance at recovery. Pseudoscience also played a significant role, with recommended “cures” including strapping live chickens around affected body parts (plague buboes) and drinking potions laced with mercury, arsenic or ground horn from the mythical unicorn. Yes, unicorns. It was a different time.

Eventually, reason won out, and there were significant transformations that took place (if you’re interested in reading more here, check out The Black Death and the Transformation of the West by David Herlihy). Most prominent among these were the increased importance of “anatomical investigations”, increased professionalism in the medical field, the rise of surgery as a discipline and an increased focus on cleanliness in society. The monumental population loss also had several positive effects, from increased social mobility among the working class, increased wages due to a severe supply shortage and a proliferation of labour-saving innovation practices that led to an increase in productivity (eg: the shift from grain farming to animal husbandry, which is far less labour intensive). The first “quarantines” also occurred during this time as a way to contain the spread of plagues. Women’s rights also improved, with inheritance laws in Europe changing to pass on ancestral property to both sons and daughters.

The Black Death is a fantastic case study on how crisis reorganises society, fuels progress and forces innovation.

The General Crisis (1618 — 1688)

The General Crisis is especially interesting to take note of because of how clearly it indicates the interconnectedness of the world in all areas — social, political, financial, medicinal, environmental and technological — even as far back as the 17th century. It was not a single event, but rather a series of events occurring across the world that many believe had a single crisis as their catalyst.

The catalyst? A destabilising of the global political order caused by a move away from monarchial structures and towards state and military organisation and rule. State efforts to promote independent fiscal and religious agendas escalated tensions with monarchs and led to multiple revolts including the English Civil War, the Fronde and the crisis of the Spanish monarchy. This charged political climate also occurred alongside a global environmental crisis known as “the Little Ice Age”, which caused wide-spread harvest failure, famine, disease and devastating demographic decline that has been compared to the Black Death (approximately a third of Europe’s population died during this time, and sustained population growth across Asia also halted or reversed). Interestingly, Japan, through the strict rule of the various Shogunates, contained the crisis through a combination of domestic suppression and the avoidance of foreign entanglements (mirroring China’s response to COVID-19, in some ways) on the one hand, and financial and legal incentives for peasant industriousness, on the other.

The culmination of societal effects of the General Crisis resulted in what some authors have described as “the phoenix effect”, and is widely considered to be the dawn of the modern world economy, with concepts such as capitalism, public-health systems, insurance and scientific study truly gaining its foothold globally.

The Spanish Flu (1918 — 1920)

Turning to the modern world and to the next most devastating health crisis, the Spanish Flu was responsible for between 50 and 100 million deaths in the early 20th century. Putting this crisis in perspective, the Spanish Flu killed more people in 24 weeks than the HIV/AIDS crisis killed in 24 years. Though there is no consensus on where the virus originated, it had clear global impact, with 12–17 million people dying from it in India at the same time that approximately 1 million died in China, 2 million in Iran, over 600,000 in the US and 300,000 in Brazil, for example. In each country, the demographic decline caused by the flu led to harvest losses, extreme hunger, and even serious neurological (encephalitis lethargica), psychological (post-influenzal dementia praecox) and physiological conditions (a form of paralysis similar to Parkinson’s disease) that remained until much later.

[Interestingly, the name “the Spanish Flu” is a misnomer. To keep up morale in countries affected by World War I, reporting on the flu was strictly controlled. Neutral Spain could freely report on the virus and its effects, which led to it being called the Spanish Flu]

A brilliant analysis of the flu and its effects on society is contained in the book Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, where the author explicitly examines how human resilience improved after the virus had passed. Advances in germ theory & psychiatry, the onset of socialised medicine and eugenics, widespread epidemiological data collection and perhaps most importantly, the creation of modern antibiotics that led to dramatic declines in deaths due to infectious diseases. Countries around the world also created dedicated Health Ministries during this time, and the state of a nation’s health became a measure of its civilisation and modernity. Directly as a result of all this, the League of Nations established its own health organisation, along with the anti-epidemic bureau, the older Pan American Health Organization and the Paris-based organisation, which collectively formed the precursor to today’s World Health Organization (WHO).

[Another interesting fact from the book: The death of one German immigrant to America from the flu resulted in his wife and son receiving a large amount of money. This money was invested primarily in property in America, and today, the immigrant’s grandson is a property magnate named Donald Trump.]

World War II (1939 — 1945)

While the 3 crises covered above illuminate the link between incident and advancement to an impressive degree, no crisis had as direct and measurable an impact on modern technology, society or human progress and resilience as World War II. Prior to, during and after the War, human innovation was on hyper-speed, and it would not be an exaggeration to state that most of the technology we take for granted today found its roots in this conflict that, unfortunately, claimed 70–85 million lives and directly affected many more in over 30 countries globally.

This crisis has been a focal point of historic investigation ever since it ended and as such, there may not be value in re-hashing the specific events that occurred in this time. Let us instead focus on how humanity recovered and progressed as a result.

Progress began with the ongoing war efforts, where rapid development was needed to help all armies — and all branches — coordinate and execute missions effectively. This meant infantry being able to navigate foreign terrain on foot with no power sources (leading to the development of the dynamo-powered torch), equipping vehicles with the fuel, safety and navigation technologies necessary to find the enemy as quickly as possible (leading to the development of the Jerrycan, synthetic rubber and oil for tyres, jet engines, pressurised aircraft cabins and radio navigation — the forerunner of current day GPS technology), treating casualties effectively and at scale (mass production and distribution of penicillin, still in use today), defending against and detecting imminent threats (using radar, which paved the way towards microwave technology), harnessing nuclear power (currently used to provide much cleaner electricity) and improving processing and computing power (development of the first ever computer, Colossus).

Even more relatable, the American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC) was founded in 1946 as a way of providing investments into companies run by soldiers returning from the war. These were effectively the first venture capital investments, and because of its success, formed the foundation of the largest catalyst of today’s innovation ecosystem — private equity.

If it weren’t for these crises, it’s very possible that we wouldn’t have SpaceX, the internet, computers or McDonalds. This is not to undercut their magnitude or the scale of tragedy that they each represent, but rather to highlight the power of a crisis to motivate positive change and progress. Each time a crisis passed, human society evolved to become better prepared for it.

The next post shifts focus away from ancient history and looks at how modern society and the dawn of widespread technology and entrepreneurship shifted the power to deal with crises from the society to the individual. Because this democratisation of change meant even fewer roadblocks to innovation, the pattern of crisis — >solution is made even more apparent and accessible.

Next: Entrepreneurial Resilience

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