Event or Evolution?

Event or Evolution? Which "E" impacts us more? That question has been crawling in my mind since I first started listening to “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. I am a reluctant history reader but this one kept me intrigued till the end and after.

This is not the review of the book but a myriad of questions that arose from it. 

History tells us that humans have come long way, from being a marginal creature to earth’s center stage. Have only incremental changes taken us so far? Or few key mileposts have shaped this journey? 

If we fast forward and narrow down to last century’s chain of events, there are few spark-points which clearly stand out.

World war I – What started as a regional conflict soon engulfed the whole world. The mass movement of soldiers spread the deadliest Influenza pandemic over the world. In the aftermath, countries turned to protectionism leading to the great depression. Simultaneously, race for advanced and lethal weapons like machine guns, chemical arms, tanks, and aerial combat changed the face of modern warfare forever. The war which was touted as “war-to-end-all-wars” ended up seeding another – World war II.

Discovery of Penicillin – While this discovery was accidental, Penicillin heralded the dawn of the antibiotic age. Penicillin helped reduce the number of deaths and amputations caused due to blood poisoning contracted from a cut or a scratch, while doctors could do little for them but wait and hope. Today it is difficult to imagine what the world would be like without penicillin.

9/11 – Even after two decades we are still living in the legacies of 9/11. Many political and human consequences are linked to the event of that fateful day. Subsequently, on economic front, rising oil prices led to lower interest rates masking the economic toll of the wars. Easy liquidity fueled US housing bubble which burst by end of 2008 causing ripple effect on global economy. 

Covid-19 – One year has already passed since WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Enormous health and economic consequences are still unfolding. This tiny virus has successfully locked us down, shaken our basic belief in social connect and has threatened normal course of life. On other hand, survival instinct has spurted digital adoption beyond any one’s imagination.

Doesn’t it allude that an event irrespective of natural or man-made dictates the tectonic shift. Is it a step up or down? All depends on our interpretation of follow-through events. Evolutionary process kick-in in the aftermath of the event to sustain or improve.

Now see this from the context of the ever-growing presence of artificial intelligence (AI). These events are rare. No history and no pattern and hence how can they be predicted? But, can they be induced, and can the impact be guided in that case? 

Try sneak peeking into our own life events. In hindsight, you will find there are very few which are responsible for what we are today. Is it possible to harness anything that can potentially induce positive event or reduce impact of negative event? Are our chain of thoughts and some realization giving those signals? Do we even process any of those fleeting thoughts in our day-to-day hustle? Someone says if water is muddy, slowdown and wait for it to clear.