Arrogance And Nature’s Deadly Hand

For millennia, humans have struggled to survive and thrive on a sometimes deadly planet. Earthquakes, plagues, crop failures, floods, fires all periodically wipe out enormous numbers of lives.

In the late 20th century, the combination of prosperity, the end of the Cold War and dramatic advances in science and technology bred a widespread arrogance that we were at the ‘end of history’ — that the combination of the moment’s geopolitical status quo and continuing advances meant we had reached an end state, immune to both humanity’s and nature’s volatility.

This was clearly the height of arrogance. The pandemic and the return of deeply challenging geopolitical rivalries have already destroyed the complacency born of this arrogance.

The growing global concern about the impact of climate change is another example of a tectonic shift in gestalt.