Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction

We need the occasional disaster, the unexpected -- some chaos in our lives -- without it, nothing changes

“A constant truth you see throughout history is that the biggest changes and the most important innovations don't happen when everyone is happy and things are going well. They tend to occur during, and after, a terrible event. When people are a little panicked, shocked, worried, and when the consequences of not acting quickly are too painful to bear.” This is according to Morgan Housel the author of Same as Ever.

Housel goes on to give examples of positive change and great innovations happening after terrible events. This includes one of the deadliest industrial disasters in US history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire where 146 garment workers were killed from being burnt alive or from jumping from a burning building. Many of these deaths would have been avoided if it wasn’t for the doors to the stairwells and exits being locked which was a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorised breaks.

The public outcry at the time was huge, in part because of the many traumatised observers who had witnessed people jumping to their deaths from the 8th, 9th, and 10th factory floors. A reporter at the tragedy would go on to say, “I learned a new sound that day, a sound more horrible than description can picture – the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk”.

The findings from the Commission that investigated this tragedy led to 38 new laws regulating labour that included fire safety and broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment. All of this led to significant improvements in working conditions for millions of workers. Needless to say, these laws and many more subsequent ones that followed saved countless lives. As terrible an event as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was, there needed to be something catastrophic to shake the public’s attention otherwise poor working conditions would have continued.

Catastrophic events focus the mind, they remove dithering, procrastination, bureaucracy and force things to get done. There’s no better example of this than war. According to Housel, “Militaries are engines of innovation because they occasionally deal with problems so important so urgent, so vital that money and manpower are removed as obstacles, and those involved collaborate in ways that are hard to emulate during calm times. You cannot compare the incentives of Silicon Valley coders trying to get you to click on, ads to Manhattan Project physicists trying to end a war that threatened the country's existence. You can't even compare their capabilities.”

Time and time again there’s evidence of destruction (eventually) bringing about positive change, whether that’s a destructive forest fire returning nutrients to the soil so new plant life can begin, a plague, a depression or the most violent explosion possible in the universe — a supernova — so life could begin.

And this is what Pablo Picasso meant when he said, “Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.”

You need bad things to happen

Think back to bad events in your life, things that were shocking and consumed you for days, weeks or months afterwards. Now think of the things that came about as a consequence of those bad events — did anything good happen?

We all want a life where nothing goes wrong. The problem is that the biggest changes only happen when things do go wrong. If nothing went wrong then life would be like strolling on a moving walkway (like you get in the airport) — smooth and easy and going on forever — in the early stages it would be fun but after a while, you’d realise that you’re unclear on where you’re going or if you’re going anywhere at all. Now and again you need to be shoved off, the walkway needs to break down and you need to reevaluate and make big changes before getting back on.

Decades ago when I was bullied at school — it was a terrible experience, in the end, I moved to a new school. It ended up being a hugely positive change, the new friends that I met shaped where and who I am today. You might argue that my life could have ended up better without the bullying — but I wouldn’t bet on it based on the better school environment and people I met as a consequence.

Later in my adult life, I unexpectedly lost my job on three occasions which brought with it stress and upheaval at the time but positive changes in the long run; better salaries, relocating to new countries, having an important operation that required a lot of time off work (and wouldn’t have been possible otherwise) and more recently making me leave a job that was making me numb inside and retire early — something I’d been considering but procrastinating over.

My most recent life shock was the passing away of my mum, I lived with her for the last year of her life and still live in her house today — it’s been our family home for 50+ years and will now be sold. In an imaginary world where there were no problems and my mum lived forever, what would happen? I wouldn’t be looking to relocate somewhere new anytime soon. Instead, I’m forced to encounter resistance and decide on what new town, city or country to move to. This big change will take me in a new direction, a new path and with it, new opportunities — some good and some bad. It’s a natural human behaviour to continue down the path of least resistance. But it’s change that makes life interesting.

The Fourth Turning

William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote an entire book that roughly translates to Morgan Housel’s lesson on destruction leading to creation called The Fourth Turning. The book is about a recurring pattern of chaos that has happened throughout thousands of years of human history. Approximately every 80-100 years there’s a great reset, an end to a cycle called a “Forth Turning”. The Forth Turning is an era of destruction that washes away debris, inefficiencies, and excess decadence and eventually leads to a new beginning. According to the authors we are currently living through a Forth Turning which began in 2008 and will continue until around 2030.

Unfair systems, governments, inequality, megalomaniacs, and dictators won’t fall without things getting so unbearable that there is a tipping point that brings destruction — once things are destroyed things can start again.

The next time something awful happens to you — there’s a good chance that some sort of change will be forced upon you and maybe something positive — and if not, at least you’re experiencing something new and living life. A “perfect life” where nothing goes wrong, with very little change isn’t living.

If it wasn’t for a destructive meteorite colliding with planet Earth then the dinosaurs would still be ruling. Catastrophic events bring catastrophic change. And it’s not to say the dinosaurs being eradicated and humans taking over was a good thing, or any massively destructive event for that matter being good or bad. Things just happen. They are neither good nor bad. It’s what Shakespeare’s Hamlet meant when he said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”.