“Doing so might allow the energy to escape, with potentially catastrophic results.” – Lost
What do you get when you cross the Titanic with the Atlantic? Halfway.
There is a rumor in The Mrs.’ family, that her Great-Grandpappy, the banker, warned all of his clients to pull their money out of the banks before Black Monday on October 28 of 1929. According to the legend, he was a hero because he saved that money for all of his friends. I heard that as an old banker he was sad, because he always drank a loan.
I have no idea if he saved all of that money, but the legend serves a purpose: it confirms that, in most people’s minds, that there are wise people who can see trouble coming.
I can do that, too. When The Mrs. chucks a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew® at my head, well, I know instinctively that if I don’t duck I’ll end up with a crescent impression on my favorite noggin. The Mrs. generally chooses stew instead of soup, because when she checked the pantry we were out of stock.
Pattern recognition and seeing trouble coming was something that the dead Roman philosopher, Seneca did fairly well. Like a good Roman, he took a stab at it.
In one observation, Seneca noted that it’s really hard to build things up: whether it be getting into good physical shape, or building a house or creating a civilization. Purposeful, positive growth is hard and takes time.
Where did Brutus get his knife? Traitor Joe’s.
But if I want to ruin my health it only takes half the time as it does to get into good shape. A modern American house burns down so quickly that firefighters tell me that they don’t even try to save them. If a Goodwill® store catches fire, they stay far away – they don’t want to inhale second-hand smoke. If you want to destroy a civilization? Well more on that later, but they evaporate much more quickly than it takes to build them.
Here’s what Seneca said: “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Actually, he said something in Latin, but when you quote Latin it sounds like a doctor is trying to pick up on a lawyer while gargling vodka.
I came across this concept while reading Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi’s blog (Cassandra’s Legacy) back in 2011. That initial post I read back then is here (LINK). Since that time, Dr. Bardi has written two books and now bases most of his blogging on that one philosophical statement. Some people ride that one pony and ride it hard, and it looks like Ugo has found his.
There are some other things I’ve noticed that are related to this concept:
Generally, things go on until they collapse. Is it easier to tear down a system and build a better one, or keep the old one going?
Duh. People don’t like change.
They aren’t mentally wired for change. During the few times in my life when electricity was out for extended times at the house (think hours or days), I find that I’ll walk into a dark room and absently reach out to turn on the light. My rational mind knows that the power is gone, but I expect it to be there.
I hear at this blackout, people in New York City were stuck on escalators for hours.
When things collapse, there is generally a lot of energy built up in the failing system. People try to prop up the system with all of the duct tape and baling wire they have. This rarely makes things better. Filling a failing dam up with more water doesn’t make the flood that comes after the dam fails better.
It makes it more catastrophic.
Failures like I’m describing tend to have the following characteristics:
- They are cataclysmic. The end state isn’t predictable.
- They happen all at once. As systems fail, they trigger the failure of related systems. And so on. It’s a chain reaction. To go back to the flood analogy, these failures scour the landscape, ripping out useful and useless features alike simply because of the amount of energy that was released.
- The more energy that’s stored (i.e., the longer we push back paying the piper), the bigger the destruction and the worse the hangover.
What’s the difference between a dam and a sock? Almost everything.
Examples of this sort of near-apocalyptic societal transformation are actually abundant in history.
- The French Revolution. In just a few short years, the French monarchy was deposed and replaced by a ruling junta of Leftist animals.
- The first United States Civil War. It went from zero to armed combat across half a continent in just a few months.
- The First World War. The Russian Revolution. The Second World War.
- The collapse of the Soviet Union.
- I could really keep writing this list until dawn, but at some point I need some sleep.
The penalties are tough for misgendering in France.
Just because the initial change happens in an instant, doesn’t mean that those changes will resolve in an instant. The French Revolution started in 1789. If you date the unrest that started on that day, you could pick the date that Napoleon went into his final exile as perhaps the end. That was in 1814.
A girl born in 1789 in France would have been, perhaps, 25 then. She would nearly certainly have been married, and probably would have her own child by then. When we study history we encompass entire generations within the span of a paragraph, though some say that Moses started history when he got the first download from a cloud onto a tablet.
As I said, The Mrs.’ Great-Gramps apparently saved the day for his depositors because he looked around and saw what was going to happen. True or not, it sometimes happens in reality.
Michael Burry did it, and more than once.
Who is Michael Burry? Well, he’s the guy who shorted the real estate market in 2008 and made $100’s of millions of dollars for himself, and nearly a billion for other people in the process.
Christian Bale was movie him in The Big Short. Burry just might have an idea or two about the economy. What’s his take?
I wonder if they could get Chris Hemsworth to play movie me?
All I can say is be prepared – a day too late is far worse than a year too soon.
