“History may not repeat, but it does rhyme”
- Mark Twain
Every day, revolutionary ideas of all sorts are thought of and executed, vaccines are made, treatments to once incurable diseases are invented, spaceships with complex and advanced technology are sent to space. We surely have countless pieces of evidence to prove what an evolved society we have become. Although material aspects seem to evolve, human behavior doesn’t. In this case, behavior being a pattern and not psychological. My goal here is to show you that even if mankind seems to be on a higher intellectual level, their behavior is still the same as it was hundred years ago, or since the beginning of times.
January 2nd of 2020, an Australian website of academic rigor publishes an article written by David Baker, lecturer in Big History at the Macquarie University, claiming that 2020 will have a “faltering standard of living for the lower and middle classes, worsening wealth inequality, more riots and uprisings (…) There is also a low to moderate chance of a “trigger event” – a shock like an environmental crisis, plague, or economic meltdown – that will kick off a period of extreme violence.” Does any of that sound familiar to you? You must think that those allegations are only obvious guesses and speculations. However, there is a science behind it. Cliodynamics is a transdisciplinary area that analyzes historical patterns of many aspects such as culture, economy, health, and politics. Mathematical equations, computer algorithms and historical data have allowed scientists of this discipline, like historians and mathematicians, to find precise patterns which will permit to determine the chances of a certain phenomenon happening in the future. Therefore, human behavior is such a vast subject that many social, economic, and health fields have used it as a strong indicator of the future.
Example of empirical evidence from cliodynamics:
To get a better understanding of historical patterns, let’s start by comparing a current phenomenon like COVID-19 to an ancient pandemic caused by the Spanish flu. The 1918-1919 Influenza pandemic was formed from a highly contagious deadly genetic variant usually found in birds. Its symptoms from the first wave were quite like those of the flu: chills, fever, and fatigue. However, when the second wave arrived, the virus became lethal. The patients had only a few days left to live after noticing symptoms. Their skin turned blue, and their deaths were caused by the presence of liquid in their lungs consequently causing them to suffocate. As you may know, one of the most known theories about COVID-19 origins is from a non-human host like bats which was passed to humans. Its most frequent symptoms are fatigue, dry cough, and more severe symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, and loss of speech or motor skills. Setting aside pathological and symptomatic resemblances, it is acknowledged that during the 1918 pandemic, measures like closing schools, public places, quarantining, and obligating the population to wear masks were taken. Confronted by those “extreme” measures the population not only started many anti-masks and anti-lockdown riots but also “race riots” as they called it. The “race riots” at that time were caused by violent attacks against the black community that led to weeks of confrontations while the police refused to act against the attackers. Those behavioral patterns between the summer of 1919 and summer 2020 are astonishingly similar. According to Connecticut State Historian Walt Woodward, “One of the situations where there is a real resonance between the past and the present.” You may recall the worldwide Black Lives Matter movement, the protesters that gathered from across the province at the Alberta legislature to fight COVID-19 health measures, or protests around the world demanding to re-open commercial areas because of the fatal economic impact that caused unemployment. Both situations in terms of virology and human behavior are so similar that most of the measures taken for COVID-19 were inspired by the same measures taken during the Spanish flu. What most people believe unexpected from those many movements can be logically expected and better understood when patterns through history like pandemics are analyzed.
Another example where history repeats itself is the financial crisis of Wall Street in 1929 and the Global crisis in 2008. Both economic situations arise from parallel financial and economic vulnerabilities which are mainly linked to the extreme velocity of credit growth and the appearance of financial innovation such as financial technologies, markets, and institutions, which incentivized leverage. In other words, because credit was so accessible, people borrowed money hoping to invest and double or triple that amount. That said, when the market started to crash, while investors were only interested in selling, many debts were made. That illusion of economic prosperity due to a specific transition is what motivated people to compulsively invest in 1929 (credit accessibility) and 2008 (real state credit). Not only did both situations have similar causes, but the political aftermath of each crisis is alike. Following the crisis came the development of nationalism in America and the progression of the far-right in Germany. Somehow, any investors believe that at this moment we may be close to living a similar economic experience. In fact, the pandemic plays its part but also the economic transition from notes and coins to cryptocurrency, credit and debit cards can provoke that feeling of prosperity.
From previous statements, it is possible to perceive that history is a cycle: a pandemic won’t make people quiet nor distanced, the desperate masses revolt, financial crisis are often caused by a financial transition, when there is a new technology adapt and adopt, people will do anything to get what they want, while the elites get richer the lower class gets poorer, etc. So far, one of the 21st century’s biggest issues is that we still haven’t changed. The real question here is how many times does history have to repeat itself before we learn from it?
-Isadora Haygert Roxo (DEC Science de la Santé)
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1739651/comparaison-grippe-espagnole-coronavirus
http://seshatdatabank.info/fractal/
https://www.nature.com/subjects/human-behaviour
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342938409_The_Psychology_of_Human_Behavior_During_a_Pandemic
https://www.quora.com/What-are-patterns-that-are-repeated-throughout-history
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2020/apr/29/how-humans-have-reacted-to-pandemics-through-history-a-visual-guide
https://theconversation.com/history-repeats-itself-thats-bad-news-for-the-2020s-127116
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H1N1
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175442.htm
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
https://www.connecticutmag.com/history/racial-unrest-disease-depression-1919-versus-2020/article_b350fd10-b2f9-11ea-ae03-eb8c72814e3b.html
https://globalnews.ca/news/7652604/feb-20-walk-for-freedom-covid-19/
https://voxeu.org/article/how-similar-current-crisis-great-depression
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