COVID-19 Exposes Humanity's Inability to Control History
I've had no shortage of time to think these days. I've now been quarantined in Wuhan for a month. This COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak has definitely changed my perspective on the world.
Among the lessons this ordeal has instilled in me is just how uncontrollable history can be. Humans have never really been in control. How many uncountable factors must converge just for life to exist? How many more convergences to produce historical trends? How much of this process do we understand? How much of it can we manipulate? Very little. The largest category is the "unknown unknowns."
Twenty years ago, nationalism looked like it was dying in the wake of globalism. Today, nationalism looks nearly inevitable as supply chains and borders have been shut down in an attempt to stop this virus.
I'm increasingly shocked by the way the virus behaves. It seems almost intelligent. It hides in incubation for an enormous amount of time (possibly 1 to 24 days). It affects a certain percentage of infectious people asymptomatically in order to render itself untraceable. It seems clever despite its single strand of RNA.
Wuhan was a growing bustling city of 11 million just a month ago. It became a ghost town almost overnight. Anything can happen. Anything can happen at any time. China's economy might lose a trillion dollars trying to contain COVID-19, yet it has not been contained.
History is out of our control.
Among the lessons this ordeal has instilled in me is just how uncontrollable history can be. Humans have never really been in control. How many uncountable factors must converge just for life to exist? How many more convergences to produce historical trends? How much of this process do we understand? How much of it can we manipulate? Very little. The largest category is the "unknown unknowns."
Twenty years ago, nationalism looked like it was dying in the wake of globalism. Today, nationalism looks nearly inevitable as supply chains and borders have been shut down in an attempt to stop this virus.
I'm increasingly shocked by the way the virus behaves. It seems almost intelligent. It hides in incubation for an enormous amount of time (possibly 1 to 24 days). It affects a certain percentage of infectious people asymptomatically in order to render itself untraceable. It seems clever despite its single strand of RNA.
Wuhan was a growing bustling city of 11 million just a month ago. It became a ghost town almost overnight. Anything can happen. Anything can happen at any time. China's economy might lose a trillion dollars trying to contain COVID-19, yet it has not been contained.
History is out of our control.