A farmer named Sai Weng owned a beautiful mare,
which was praised far and wide. One day this beautiful horse disappeared. The
people of his village offered sympathy to Sai Weng for his great misfortune.
Sai Weng simply said, “Good? Bad? Who’s to say?”
A few days later the lost mare returned, followed
by a beautiful wild stallion. The village congratulated Sai Weng for his good
fortune. Again, he said, “Good? Bad? Who’s to say?”
Some time later, Sai Weng's only son, while
breaking in the stallion, fell and broke his leg. The villagers once again
expressed their sympathy at Sai Weng's misfortune. Sai Weng again said, “Good?
Bad? Who’s to say?”
Soon thereafter, war broke out and all the young
men of the village, except Sai Weng's son, were drafted and killed in battle.
The villagers were amazed as Sai Weng's good luck. His son was the only young
man left alive in the village. But Sai Weng kept his same attitude: despite all
the turmoil, gains and losses, he gave the same reply, “Good? Bad? Who’s to
say?”
I have long said that destruction precedes
creation; pain precedes joy; and loss precedes gain. In that spirit, here are
some horrific tragedies that resulted in good things:
The Black Death
The Plague that utterly
ravaged humanity, killing up to 60 percent of Europeans, and dropping the
population of the entire world by 20 percent by some estimates. The Plague came
in three forms. Bubonic was the most common and easiest to spot. Sufferers
developed huge sores under the armpits, on the neck, and in the groin. Death occurred
less than a week after infection. Pneumonic was the second form, and it
infected the lungs. It also had a mortality rate of 95 percent, which seems
impressive until you learn that Septicemic Plague, the third variety, had a
mortality rate close to 100 percent. Much like attacking Bruce Willis on
Christmas, if you contracted Septicemic Plague, your life expectancy was about
a day!
The Silver Lining?
The birth of the modern
world! Before the plague there had been massive overpopulation in Medieval
Europe. Along with it came famine, poor sanitation, overcrowding—all of which
helped to accelerate the progress of infectious diseases. Disease, starvation,
and predators make up Mother Nature's three-pronged population control
failsafe, and things had gotten to the point where it was going to be the
Plague or lions!
The ensuing wave of
death and horror set off a series of dominoes that would help create the modern
world. First, the Plague left behind a sudden shortage of labor, thus landlords
were forced to compete for workers by offering higher wages and better
treatment. A lower population also brought cheaper land prices, more food for
the average peasant, and a relatively large increase in income among the lower
classes. Essentially, the Black Death brought about the end of feudalism, the
establishment of capitalism, and was one of the major factors that ultimately
caused the Renaissance.
Chernobyl Meltdown
Chernobyl is considered
to be the worst nuclear disaster in history. It started when engineers at the
plant wanted to see if, should power to the plant fail, they could keep the
cooling pump system going from the reactors themselves. We can see how someone
would be eager to break up the drudgery of life at a communist-run power plant,
which probably consisted of hauling atoms back and forth in drab, gray
wheelbarrows and standing in line for enriched uranium, but deliberately
messing around with nuclear safety regulations just to “see what happens” seems
to be taking it too far.
Two huge explosions blew
off the reactor's roof, the highly radioactive contents were spewed into the
atmosphere, air was sucked in which ignited carbon monoxide gas, and the
reactor was set on fire for nine days straight. Because the Soviet Union
couldn't be bothered to house the Chernobyl reactor in a concrete shell, as was
standard, 100 times more radiation was released than in the Nagasaki and
Hiroshima bombings combined!
The Silver Lining?
It ended the Cold War.
Or helped to, anyway. What happened in the USSR, stayed in the USSR. Secrecy is
what having a police state is all about. So at first, the Soviet authorities
stuck to their communist policy of “ignore the disaster and hope it will go
away.” The only problem was that you can't just explode a nuclear reactor and
release a cloud of death in the process, and expect nobody to notice. Officials
in Sweden raised alarm about the huge levels of radiation sweeping over Europe
from Russia, and the Kremlin was forced to break its customary silence after 48
hours. Three weeks later, Mikhail Gorbachev finally commented, with
unprecedented honesty. This is the point when, against the will of the hardliners,
the light came shining in. Gorbachev was forced to be completely honest, and
give journalists access to nuclear officials and doctors. And once the press
was allowed to start tugging at loose threads, communism came unraveled. When
the citizenry found out that bread lines were not “awesome,” this led to mass
dissatisfaction that fueled the eventual end of the Cold War, and the Soviet
Union.
World War I
Almost 60 percent of the
soldiers who mobilized in 1914 wound up as casualties. They pulled off those
numbers with bullets, and bayonets, and poison gas, and guys screaming in muddy
trenches—the human experiments of technology and weaponry that strove for better
ways to turn humans into a fine red mist.
The Silver Lining?
The Women's Rights
movement. World War I was really the point where war made an abrupt transition
from bunches of angry guys on horses to tanks and other mass-produced machines.
War was becoming a contest of manufacturing capacity and that meant the
assembly line worker became just as important as the soldier. It was around
1915 that Britain realized all their able-bodied males were off shooting at
Germans, and started employing women in munitions factories. A year later,
conscription sucked even more men off the production floor. It's true that most
of those women would quit their jobs when the men came back home, but it was
too late. They had escaped the kitchen, and would win the right to vote in
1918, and ultimately the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 came
about because of the War.
The Crusades
The Crusades were an
attempt to convert the world to Western Christianity, and unite them under the
leadership of the Pope—and predictably ended in a giant pile of corpses. The
West tried to conquer and hold the Holy Land (Jerusalem) for the entire medieval period! Usually, if
something doesn't work for a couple of centuries, you should probably just
quit. Both sides were bloodthirsty, cruel, and greedy; but the initial
Christian assault took the cake with a particularly bloody, largely unprovoked
conquest of Jerusalem that resulted in funeral pyres “as large as houses.”
The Silver Lining?
America! With all the
travel between the Islamic and Western worlds, the Christians were bound to pick
up something useful. The exposure to Islam gave the west the foundations of
modern science, medicine, and architecture. Yeah, pretty useful! The need to transport and
supply huge armies also led to improved trading in Europe, and helped to
kick-start the Renaissance in Italy, which further shaped modern art, science,
music, and philosophy. Oh, and one more thing. Eventually, due to the rising
Ottoman Empire in the East cutting off Western trade with Asia, Europe was
forced to find alternate trading routes, which ultimately led to Columbus
discovering America. Attempted medieval genocide—Good? Bad? Who’s to say?
