Courage in Crisis: Lessons from History

This article first appeared in The Sunday Star Times.

I’m a history nerd, the kind who’ll lecture my mates on Mongol battle tactics if they let me. I should have self-isolated long ago I know…

But in times like these, reflecting on history gives pause to the chaos in our lives. It’s a way to reframe our crisis away from personal pain and remember that, in the big picture, we’ve been here before and we can do this. Crisis has always been the plotline of the human story and history is full of examples of the collective courage we need now.

In the absence of my mates, I’ll bore you with some history instead.

1920 was not a good year for Germany. In the aftermath of WWI and the overthrow of imperial rule, life was marred by political instability, paramilitary street battles and an economy in meltdown. Rising from the ashes was the Weimar Republic, the country’s first democratic experiment and a spark of hope for a people in crisis. In its first great test, paramilitary leaders staged a coup and took Berlin by force. Fleeing the city, the elected government called on the people for support. The general strike that followed was unprecedented. Millions of everyday Germans stood still in unison. Newspapers stopped printing, state employees stayed home and utilities ground to a halt. The people left nothing to govern and the coup collapsed in just four days.

100 years later, it’s our turn to trust in collective inaction to protect the things that matter.

Soldiers of the Ehrhardt brigade occupy Berlin during the Kapp Putsch

‘Sakoku’ means ‘country in chains’ in Japanese. For centuries, it was the nation’s isolation policy; the brutal suppression of foreign people and ideas that threatened its culture or ruling elite. In 1853, that worldview suddenly collapsed. The arrival of modern Western gunboats and diplomats dictating terms revealed a jarring truth; Japan was easy prey for hungry colonial powers. Plunged into crisis, Japan’s leaders enacted a series of rapid, deep reforms. Feudal class divisions were dismantled, decision making centralised, language dialects standardised, industry modernised and education made freely available. The Meiji Restoration, as it would become known, was a great pivot. From wilful ignorance, arrogance and stagnation and towards the search for knowledge and progress. Just 40 years on from the crisis, Japan would shock the world by defeating the Russian navy. Twice.

While the story does not end happily (Japan would itself morph into a brutal colonial power), this moment in time teaches us that honesty and humility are the first steps forward from crisis. We hear echos of that ego today - when pundits label Covid 19 as ‘just a bad flu’ or when Dad says that he’ll kill the virus with Chardonnay. Admitting vulnerability, is the first step towards action.

The modernisation of Kyoto Station during the Restoration

In 1941, the US declared itself the ‘arsenal of democracy’ – the builders of the guns, tanks and material that would beat down fascism. To ship this great arsenal, the allies turned to what President Roosevelt would call “a dreadful looking object”. Slow, copied from an obsolete design and occasionally suffering from hull cracks, the Liberty ship would go on to be the most widely built ship in history. Once the decision was made to go all in, the shipyards went to work. The build was optimised and streamlined, down from 230 days to just 42 by war’s end. One shipyard team managed the feat in just four days and at one point, a Liberty ship was launched every 16 hours. The ship became a symbol of the Allied spirit; first-time female workers staffed the welding torches, British sailors ferried cargo across the Atlantic, American troops crammed into its bulkheads in the Pacific.

Time magazine’s “ugly duckling” was the ship that won the war and proof that momentum beats perfection. In our own time of crisis, it’s a lesson to go all in with the plan we’ve got and don’t stop until the job is done.

We’re living through a time of unprecedented measures in response to extraordinary challenges. We are being called on to write our own chapter in the human story. It will be painful, but like those before us, it will be a chapter about courage and action in the face of crisis.