Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

  Paired with that chapter on Chile is Chapter 5 on Indonesia, whose breakdown of political compromise among its citizens also resulted in the internal explosion of a coup attempt, in this case on October 1, 1965. The coup’s outcome was opposite to that of Chile’s coup: a counter-coup led to genocidal elimination of the faction presumed to have supported the coup attempt. Indonesia stands in further contrast to all of the other nations discussed in this book: it is the poorest, least industrialized, and least Westernized of my seven nations; and it has the youngest national identity, cemented only during the 40 years that I have been working there.

  The next two chapters (Chapters 6 and 7) discuss German and Australian national crises that seemingly unfolded gradually instead of exploding with a bang. Some readers may hesitate to apply the term “crisis” or “upheaval” to such gradual developments. But even if one prefers to apply a different term to them, I have still found it useful to view them within the same framework that I use to discuss more abrupt transitions, because they pose the same questions of selective change and illustrate the same factors influencing outcomes. In addition, the difference between “explosive crises” and “gradual change” is arbitrary rather than sharp: they grade into each other. Even in the cases of apparently abrupt transitions, such as Chile’s coup, decades of gradually growing tension led to the coup, and decades of gradual changes followed it. I describe the crises of Chapters 6 and 7 as only “seemingly” unfolding gradually, because in fact post-war Germany’s crisis began with the most traumatic devastation experienced by any of the countries discussed in this book: Germany’s ruined condition as of the date of its surrender in World War Two on May 8, 1945. Similarly, while post-war Australia’s crisis unfolded gradually, it began with three shocking military defeats within the space of less than three months.

  The first of my two nations illustrating non-explosive crises is post–World War Two Germany (Chapter 6), which was simultaneously confronted with the issues of its Nazi-era legacies, of disagreements about its society’s hierarchal organization, and of the trauma of political division between West and East Germany. Within my comparative framework, distinctive features of crisis resolution in post-war Germany include exceptionally violent clashes between generations, strong geopolitical constraints, and the process of reconciliation with nations that had been victims of German wartime atrocities.

  My other example of non-explosive crises is Australia (Chapter 7), which has remodeled its national identity during the 55 years that I have been visiting it. When I first arrived in 1964, Australia seemed like a remote British outpost in the Pacific Ocean, still looking to Britain for its identity, and still practicing a White Australia policy that limited or excluded non-European immigrants. But Australia was facing an identity crisis, because that white and British identity conflicted increasingly with Australia’s geographic location, foreign policy needs, defense strategy, economy, and population make-up. Today, Australia’s trade and politics are oriented towards Asia, Australian city streets and university campuses are crowded with Asians, and Australian voters only narrowly defeated a referendum to remove the Queen of England as Australia’s head of state. However, as in Meiji Japan and Finland, those changes have been selective: Australia is still a parliamentary democracy, its national language is still English, and a large majority of Australians are still British by ancestry.

  All of these national crises discussed so far are well recognized, and have been resolved (or at least resolutions are already long underway), with the result that we can evaluate their outcomes. The last four chapters describe present and future crises, whose outcomes are still unknown. I begin this section with Japan (Chapter 8), already the subject of Chapter 3. Japan today faces numerous fundamental problems, some of which are widely recognized and acknowledged by the Japanese people and government, while others are not recognized or even are widely denied by the Japanese. At present, these problems are not clearly moving towards solution; Japan’s future is truly up for grabs, in the hands of its own people. Will the memories of how Meiji Japan courageously and successfully overcame its crisis help modern Japan to succeed?

  The next two chapters (Chapters 9 and 10) concern my own country, the United States. I identify four growing crises that hold the potential to undermine American democracy and American strength within the next decade, as already happened in Chile. Of course, these are not discoveries of mine: there is open discussion of all four among many Americans, and a sense of crisis is widespread in the U.S. today. It appears to me that all four problems are not currently moving towards solution, but are instead getting worse. Yet the U.S., like Meiji Japan, has its own memories of overcoming crises, notably our long and lacerating Civil War, and our suddenly being dragged out of political isolation into World War Two. Will those memories now help my country to succeed?

  Finally comes the whole world (Chapter 11). While one could assemble an infinite list of problems facing the world, I focus on four for which it seems to me that trends already underway will, if they continue, undermine living standards worldwide within the next several decades. Unlike Japan and the U.S., both of which have long histories of national identity, self-government, and memories of successful collective action, the whole world lacks such a history. Without such memories to inspire us, will the world succeed, now that for the first time in history we are confronted with problems that are potentially fatal worldwide?

  This book concludes with an epilogue that examines our studies of seven nations and of the world, in the light of our dozen factors. I ask whether nations require crises to galvanize them into undertaking big changes. It required the shock of the Cocoanut Grove fire to transform short-term psychotherapy: can nations decide to transform themselves without the shock of a Cocoanut Grove? I consider whether leaders have decisive effects on history; I propose directions for future studies; and I suggest types of lessons that might realistically be gained from examining history. If people, or even just their leaders, choose to reflect on past crises, then understanding of the past might help us to resolve our present and future crises.

  PART 1

  INDIVIDUALS

  CHAPTER 1

  PERSONAL CRISES

  A personal crisis—Trajectories—Dealing with crises—Factors related to outcomes—National crises

  At the age of 21, I experienced the most severe crisis of my professional life. I had grown up in Boston as the oldest child of educated parents, my father a Harvard professor and my mother a linguist and pianist and teacher, who encouraged my love of learning. I attended a great secondary school (Roxbury Latin School), then a great college (Harvard College). I thrived in school, did well in all of my courses, completed and published two laboratory research projects while still in college, and graduated at the top of my class. Influenced by the example of my physician father, and by my happy and successful experiences of undergraduate research, I decided to pursue a PhD in the laboratory science of physiology. For graduate study I moved in September 1958 to the University of Cambridge in England, at that time a world leader in physiology. Additional attractions of my moving to Cambridge included my first opportunities to live far from home, to travel in Europe, and to speak foreign languages, of which by then I had already learned six from books.

  Graduate study in England soon proved far more difficult for me than had been my Roxbury Latin and Harvard courses, or even than my undergraduate research experience. My PhD mentor at Cambridge, whose laboratory and office I shared, was a great physiologist about to study electricity generation in electric eels. He wanted me to measure movements of charged particles (sodium and potassium ions) across the eels’ electricity-generating membranes. That required me to design the necessary equipment. But I had never been good with my hands. I hadn’t even been able to complete unassisted a high school assignment of building a simple radio. I certainly had no idea how to design a chamber to study eel membranes, no less to do anything remotely complicated involving electricity.

&n
bsp; I had come to Cambridge highly recommended by my Harvard University research advisor. But it was now as obvious to me as it was to my Cambridge advisor that I was a disappointment to him. I was useless to him as a research collaborator. He transferred me to a separate lab of my own, where I could figure out a research project for myself.

  In an effort to find a project better suited to my technological ineptitude, I latched onto the idea of studying sodium and water transport by the gallbladder, a simple sac-like organ. The required technology was elementary: just suspend a fluid-filled fish gallbladder every 10 minutes from an accurate scale, and weigh the water contained in the gallbladder. Even I could do that! The gallbladder itself isn’t so important, but it belongs to a class of tissues called epithelia that include much more important organs, such as the kidneys and intestines. At that time in 1959, all known epithelial tissues that transported ions and water, as did the gallbladder, developed voltages associated with their transport of the charged ions. But whenever I tried to measure a voltage across the gallbladder, I recorded zero. In those days that was considered strong evidence either that I hadn’t mastered even the simple technology that would have sufficed to detect a voltage across the gallbladder if there had been any, or that I had somehow killed the tissue and it wasn’t functioning. In either case, I was chalking up another failure as a laboratory physiologist.

  My demoralization increased when I attended in June 1959 the first congress of the International Biophysical Society at Cambridge. Hundreds of scientists from around the world presented papers on their research; I had no results to present. I felt humiliated. I had been used to being always at the top of my class; now, I was a nobody.

  I began to develop philosophical doubts about pursuing a career of scientific research at all. I read and re-read Thoreau’s famous book Walden. I felt shaken by what I saw as its message for me: that the real motive for pursuing science was the egotistical one of getting recognition from other scientists. (Yes, that really is a big motive for most scientists!) But Thoreau persuasively dismissed such motives as empty pretense. Walden’s core message was: I should figure out what I really want in my life, and not be seduced by the vanity of recognition. Thoreau reinforced my doubts about whether to continue in scientific research at Cambridge. But a moment of decision was approaching: my second year of graduate school would begin at the end of the summer, and I would have to re-enroll if I wanted to continue.

  At the end of June I went off to spend a month’s vacation in Finland, a wonderful and profound experience that I’ll discuss in the next chapter. In Finland for the first time, I had the experience of learning a language, the difficult and beautiful Finnish language, not from books but just by listening and talking to people. I loved it. It was as satisfying and successful as my physiological research was depressing and unsuccessful.

  By the end of my month in Finland, I was seriously considering abandoning a career in science, or indeed in any academic discipline. Instead, I thought of going to Switzerland, indulging my love for and ability in languages, and becoming a simultaneous translator of languages at the United Nations. That would mean turning my back on the life of research, creative thought, and academic fame that I had imagined for myself, and that my professor father exemplified. As a translator, I would not be well paid. But at least I would be doing something that I thought I’d enjoy and would be good at—so it seemed to me then.

  My crisis came to a head on my return from Finland, when I met my parents (whom I hadn’t seen in a year) for a week in Paris. I told them of my practical and philosophical doubts about pursuing a research career, and my thoughts of becoming a translator. It must have been agonizing for my parents to witness my confusion and misery. Bless them, they listened, and they didn’t presume to tell me what to do.

  The crisis reached resolution one morning while my parents and I were sitting together on a Paris park bench, once again thrashing out the question of whether I should give up on science now or should continue. Finally, my father gently made a suggestion, without pressuring me. Yes, he acknowledged, I had doubts about a scientific research career. But this had been only my first year of graduate school, and I had been trying to study the gallbladder for only a few months. Wasn’t it really too early to give up on a planned lifetime career? Why not return to Cambridge, give it another chance, and devote just another half-year to trying to solve gallbladder research problems? If that didn’t work out, I could still give it up in the spring of 1960; I didn’t have to make an irreversible big decision now.

  My father’s suggestion felt to me like a life-preserver thrown to a drowning man. I could postpone the big decision for a good reason (to try for another half-year); there was nothing shameful about that. The decision didn’t commit me irrevocably to a scientific research career. I still had the option of becoming a simultaneous translator after half-a-year.

  That settled it. I did return to Cambridge to begin my second year there. I resumed my gallbladder research. Two young physiology faculty members, to whom I’ll be eternally grateful, helped me to solve the technological problems of gallbladder research. In particular, one helped me to realize that my method of measuring voltages across the gallbladder was perfectly adequate; the gallbladder did develop voltages that I could measure (so-called “diffusion potentials” and “streaming potentials”) under appropriate conditions. It was just that the gallbladder didn’t develop voltages while transporting ions and water, for the remarkable reason that (uniquely among transporting epithelia known at the time) it transported positive and negative ions equally, and so transported no net charge and developed no transport voltage.

  My gallbladder results began to interest other physiologists, and to excite even me. As my gallbladder experiments succeeded, my broad philosophical doubts about the vanity of recognition by other scientists faded away. I stayed at Cambridge for four years, completed my PhD, returned to the U.S., got good university jobs doing research and teaching in physiology (first at Harvard and then at UCLA), and became a very successful physiologist.

  That was my first major professional crisis, a common type of personal crisis. Of course it wasn’t my last life crisis. I later had two much milder professional crises around 1980 and 2000, concerning changes in the direction of my research. Ahead of me still lay severe personal crises about getting married for the first time, and (seven-and-a-half years later) about getting divorced. That first professional crisis was in its specifics unique to me: I doubt that anyone else in world history has ever struggled with a decision about whether to abandon gallbladder physiological research in favor of becoming a simultaneous translator. But, as we’ll now see, the broad issues that my 1959 crisis posed were completely typical for personal crises in general.

  Almost all readers of this book have experienced or will experience an upheaval constituting a personal “crisis,” as I did in 1959. When you’re in the middle of it, you don’t pause to think about academic questions of defining “crisis”; you know that you’re in one. Later, when the crisis has passed and you have the leisure to reflect on it, you may define it in retrospect as a situation in which you found yourself facing an important challenge that felt insurmountable by your usual methods of coping and problem-solving. You struggled to develop new coping methods. As did I, you questioned your identity, your values, and your view of the world.

  Undoubtedly, you’ve seen how personal crises arise in different forms and from different causes, and follow different trajectories. Some take the form of a single unanticipated shock—such as the sudden death of a loved one, or being fired without warning from your job, or a serious accident, or a natural disaster. The resulting loss may precipitate a crisis not only because of the practical consequences of the loss itself (e.g., you no longer have a spouse), but also because of the emotional pain, and the blow to your belief that the world is fair. That was true for relatives and close friends of the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire. Other crises instead take the form of a problem buildi
ng up slowly until it explodes—such as the disintegration of a marriage, chronic serious illness in oneself or in a loved one, or a money-related or career-related problem. Still other crises are developmental ones that tend to unfold at certain major life transitions, such as adolescence, midlife, retirement, and old age. For instance, in a midlife crisis you may feel that the best years of your life are over, and you grapple to identify satisfying goals for the rest of your life.

  Those are the different forms of personal crises. Among their commonest specific causes are relationship problems: a divorce, a break-up of a close relationship, or else deep dissatisfaction leading you or your partner to question continuing the relationship. Divorce often drives people to ask themselves: What did I do wrong? Why does he/she want to leave me? Why did I make such a bad choice? What can I do differently next time? Will there ever be a next time for me? If I can’t succeed in a relationship even with the person who is closest to me and whom I chose, what good am I at all?

  Besides relationship problems, other frequent causes of personal crises include deaths and illnesses of loved ones, and setbacks to one’s health, career, or financial security. Still other crises involve religion: lifelong believers in a faith may find themselves plagued by doubt, or (conversely) non-believers may find themselves drawn to a religion. But, shared among all of those types of crisis, whatever their cause, is the sense that something important about one’s current approach to life isn’t working, and that one has to find a new approach.

  My own interest in personal crises, like that of many other people, stemmed initially from the crises that I’ve experienced myself or that I’ve seen befalling friends and relatives. For me, that familiar personal motive has been further stimulated by the career of my wife Marie, a clinical psychologist. During the first year of our marriage, Marie trained at a community mental health center, in which a clinic offered short-term psychotherapy for clients in crisis. Clients visited or phoned that clinic in a state of crisis, because they felt overwhelmed by a big challenge that they couldn’t solve by themselves. When the door opened or the phone rang at the clinic reception, and the next client walked in or began talking, the counselor didn’t know in advance what type of issue that particular person faced. But the counselor knew that that client, like all the previous clients, would be in a state of acute personal crisis, precipitated by their having acknowledged to themselves that their established ways of coping were no longer sufficient.