It was a treasured childhood ritual.
I would sit quietly while my grandfather regaled me with stories.
Sometimes, these would be fanciful tales, generated by his endless imagination. But more often they’d be full of truth.
My grandfather had plenty of material to work with. For he had seemingly seen it all.
He grew up in the throes of the Great Depression, enlisted in the Navy in World War II, and attended college on the GI Bill. His adult years were marked by the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, and an inflation crisis. There were stories for just about all these events.
I cherished these tales because they gave me a window into history. The Berlin Wall fell in my lifetime, but I was too young to remember the occasion. And all the other crises had long ended before I was around. My grandfather’s stories were all that was left.
It was hard for me to imagine a world with such tumult. After all, the era I was experiencing firsthand was full of stability and prosperity.
And yet, I listened intently. For while it seemed unlikely that this turbulent history would repeat itself, there were plenty of lessons to be learned from it.
Fast forward a few decades. My grandfather no longer walks this earth. But his stories are still with me.
I’m especially thankful for that these days.
It’s no secret that the last couple of years have been difficult.
We’ve been saddled by a brutal pandemic, a battered economy, a contested presidential election, a racial reckoning, and a war in Europe. Nearly all the low points of the 20th century have reemerged in a singular period in the 21st.
Such a development has shattered our assumptions. We once believed that we had insulated ourselves from disease, political instability, financial strife, and strained race relations. We once believed that threats of nuclear war were off the table and that America’s global clout was assured.
No longer.
As we wade through these suddenly uncertain waters, we find ourselves asking the same question: How did we get here?
We were supposed to have protections against all that’s befallen us. Our technological capacity is far beyond what was imaginable even a generation ago. Medical breakthroughs have helped us manage ailments that were once devastating. We’re more enlightened — individually and collectively — than we were decades ago.
And yet, here we are again — finding ourselves blindsided as history repeats itself.
Such dissonance between intentions and outcomes can make us fatalistic. It can lead us to conclude that this spiral of doom is inevitable.
But such a conclusion misses the mark.
Globalization.
It’s a word that’s everywhere these days.
When times are good, globalization is the key to our expanded possibilities. When things are going poorly, it’s the scapegoat for our problems.
We act as if globalization is a newfangled concept. As if it’s something conjured up in recent years.
It’s anything but.
Known efforts to connect the world stretch back at least to the Roman Empire. And they likely go back far earlier.
The Roman Empire might not seem globalized to our modern eyes. After all, the Romans didn’t have international wire transfers, instantaneous news delivery, or asynchronous supply chains at their beck and call. But ultimately, that’s just window dressing.
Through systems, edicts, and innovations, the Romans made a mark on the affairs of the world. Some of their initiatives — such as a representative government, and networks of roads and utilities — were a net positive. Others — such as robust a system of slavery and rampant religious persecution — are viewed with disdain.
Both the good and the bad are marked in the annals of history. All that knowledge has been passed on through hundreds of generations. And much of it — whether exemplary or shameful — has been repeated, long after the fall of Caesar.
The wheels of history keep turning, for better or for worse.
Why do we believe that the bad outcomes of our past won’t reoccur in our future?
It is our belief in our own enlightenment? Our faith in innovation? Our investment in robust protection?
It doesn’t matter.
Truth be told, we cannot bypass the spiral of doom.
For part of what sends us forward is also what sends us backward. The two forces are inherently linked.
Forward momentum involves change. Yet, change is something we’re notoriously bad at dealing with.
As such, a series of missteps and bad outcomes are almost inevitable as the world moves forward.
Don’t believe me? Consider the 20th century.
The world took a massive leap forward in that time. But it was also roiled by a series of devastating events, from global wars to financial crises to a flu pandemic.
These events might seem disparate and random, but they’re interconnected.
A period of rapid industrialization at the turn of the century opened the door to new opportunities. But it also threatened the world order – which mostly consisted of empires at that time.
Such tensions led directly to World War I. And the mobilization of troops helped spread a nasty flu strain, intensifying the Spanish Flu Pandemic.
In the wake of that war, Germany was in shambles. A combination of punitive sanctions and hyperinflation left that nation open to far-right influences, spurring the rise of the Nazis and the horrors of the Holocaust.
After the Nazis were vanquished in World War II, tensions over how the fallen Reich would be divided ultimately led to the Cold War. And runaway defense spending — on both sides of the Iron Curtain — led to even more financial instability and the eventual end of the conflict.
These events played out over the course of eight decades, leading to a slow burn of misery. But despite that long timeline, there was little that could be done on the individual level to stop the carnage.
So yes, perhaps it was inevitable that we’d end up here — withstanding a hurricane of bad outcomes. But ultimately, that’s not what’s important.
What matters most — especially now — is how we respond.
Will we wave the white flag, and bury our heads in the sand? Or will we work toward building a brighter future, no matter the speed bumps that might lie in our way?
There really is only one sensible answer.
The spiral of doom is real. But it doesn’t have to define us.
Let’s not let it.