Do tough times make tougher people? Does how we raise our children have an impact on society at large? Can we handle the power of our weapons without destroying ourselves? Can human capabilities, knowledge, and technology regress? There’s a very Twilight Zone sort of element to such ideas, with subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) overtones that seem to speak to our present times. They are ideas that cross the boundaries of modern academic disciplines and tread into territory usually occupied by drama, literature, and the arts.
But even without agreed-upon answers, such questions are both fascinating and potentially valuable. Many of them are the types of proverbial “deep questions” that have always been at the heart of philosophical works. Simply thinking about them more often may have value. Others may offer some practical usefulness. Reminding us all, for example, of how many times similar occurrences have taken place in the past may help add a layer of believability to many future possible occurrences that seem more like far-fetched movie plots right now. A history professor once told me that there are two ways we learn: you can put your hand on the hot stove, or you can hear tales of people who already did that and how it turned out for them.
Hardcore History fans have long been asking about a book. I had so much existent material, research, and ideas in the archives that it just seemed natural to use them as the nucleus for such a work. Going back and sorting through it became something of a personal Rorschach test. When one considers all the reading and research that goes into these shows, it’s imperative that the subject be of great interest to me.
If a person’s bookshelf is a window into their interests, apparently mine lean toward the apocalyptic—although it was a bit surprising just how often the shows eventually factored down to a related version of the same idea: the End of Civilization in one form or another and not just how we humans might react or respond to that based on past experience, but what kind of people these experiences might make us.
Can you blame me? The rise and falls of empires, the wars, the catastrophes, the high-stakes situations—the “Big Stories”—are intense and dramatic by their very nature.[2] The combination of material that is entertaining as well as (potentially) philosophical, educational, and practical is an age-old winning formula. Historians and storytellers from Homer and Herodotus to Edward Gibbon and Will Durant recognized that long before Ajax and Achilles were spearing their way dramatically and bloodily through The Iliad while making “History.” There’s a reason a guy like Shakespeare mined the past so often for his material.
But it isn’t just about diversion or amusement. One is often moved to a form of historical empathy and personal reflection. These events happen to real flesh-and-blood human beings who were often relentlessly trapped in the gears of history. It’s hard not to wonder how we would cope if we found ourselves in similar situations.
One of the things that I kept noticing when burrowing into the archives was a recurring, unanswerable either/or historical question. Will things keep happening as they always have, or won’t they? It is an unbelievably intense and scary question in some circumstances. Some of those types of case studies, if you will, are discussed in this book.
Will we ever again have the type of pandemics that rapidly kill large percentages of the population? This was a feature of normal human existence until relatively recently, but seems almost like science fiction to imagine today.
There have always been large wars between the great powers. Any next such war would involve nuclear-armed states. World War III sounds like a bad movie concept, but is it any more unlikely than eternal peace between the great states?
Finally, as we asked earlier, can you imagine the city you currently live in as a desolate ruin? Will it one day be like most cities that have ever existed, or not? Either outcome seems fascinating.
While much of what follows is rather dark, looking at history has a way of putting our circumstances in better perspective. Hearing about what, for example, people dealt with as their cities were carpet-bombed or while enduring monstrous medieval plagues has a way of making your problems seem small. Premodern dentistry alone is enough to convince me things are pretty good now, no matter what.
And yet, despite all the differences between people over the ages, some events and eras seem, as Barbara Tuchman wrote, like looking into a distant mirror. It’s hard not to wonder how we would cope in similar circumstances. My grandfather loved the phrase “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Thanks to a bit of cosmic luck, we were born at the time we were, and in the place we were. It could’ve easily been any other time and some other place. I find that recalling that makes having historical empathy somewhat easier.
However, despite the seeming stability of our time, there’s also no guarantee that our current situation won’t change drastically. The examples in this book dramatize some times in which this happened. At the risk of sounding like a low-rent Nostradamus wearing a sandwich board sign reading “The End Is Near,” a modern version of the Bronze Age collapse could happen to us. Or the global superpower could implode unexpectedly, as ancient Assyria did, creating a huge geopolitical vacuum. Our version of Rome could fragment as the Roman Empire did. A pandemic could easily arise and if bad enough could remind us what life was like for human beings before modern medicine. A nuclear war could occur, or environmental disaster could await us. We may yet find ourselves in a reality that future ages read about in books on examples of extreme human experiences or warnings about things to avoid doing.
Hubris is, after all, a pretty classic human trait. As my dad used to say, “Don’t get cocky.”
DO TOUGH TIMES MAKE FOR TOUGHER PEOPLE?
FOR AS LONG as humans have been writing history, some historians have suggested that hard times somehow create better, tougher people, that overcoming obstacles—through war or privation or some other hardship—creates stronger, more resilient, perhaps even more virtuous, human beings.
“History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up,” Voltaire reportedly said. The observation refers to the argument that fortunes of nations or civilizations or societies rise and fall based on the character of their people, and this character is heavily influenced by the material and moral condition of their society. The idea was a staple of history writing from ancient Greece until it began to decline in popularity after the middle of the twentieth century.[1]
Nowadays, the wooden shoes–silk slippers concept has been largely dismissed by modern historians. There are all sorts of very good reasons for this, starting with the lack of data. It is hard to prove or quantify an amorphous human quality such as toughness or resilience[2] and then justify its inclusion in a fact-driven, and peer-reviewed, academic history book. But that doesn’t mean it has no impact at all.
Let’s try a little mental exercise: Imagine that two boxers step into the ring together. They are the same height, weight, and skill level. They have had the same conditioning; they even shared a trainer. All possible variables have been eliminated. What is most likely to be the deciding factor in determining