History → Empathy → Innovation
Interested in any particular part? Check links below to other parts!
History’s Cycle and Arrow
In the fall of 2019, I was fortunate to take this class called “History of Everything” (HIST 103 at UIUC). It was a class on “Big History”. Big History takes a 13 billion year perspective on history from the big bang to the present. It’s a multidisciplinary integrated take on history mixing various fields from science and art looking for patterns, trends, and themes throughout all of the past.
I was intrigued about and excited by bringing disparate disciplines together. Months after the class I’m pretty surprised and astonished about it, and some of the ideas and information shared in this class has changed the way I think about what history can help with.
This one lecture on diseases (pandemics and plagues) and people was very relevant to what happened in 2020 and this year.
2 months before an actual pandemic happened.
Our professor started with an (i-Clicker) question: “Do you think humanity will be struck by a major pandemic in your lifetime?” I’m still startled by it today…
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Even more intriguing is what he ended the lecture with
A highlight of “Long term social and economic consequences” (of pandemics paraphrased below).
Health: Population impacts or loss
Economic: Recession, stall of work and labor, loss/shortage of jobs, etc
Technological Innovation: In technology (for war), communications, and mobility
Political/Social: “Class consciousness and rebellion” becoming more mindful of social class and resulting actions/impacts: uprisings
Social/Cultural: “Cultural discontinuity” and “Disconnection from the past”
(Sepkoski)
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Keep in mind Political, Cultural, and Innovation consequences.
Each of the “long-term social and economic consequences” has manifested in Covid-19 in some way, and each has its higher-order consequences. Examples of cultural discontinuity for example would be the cancelations of traditional events and changes to thinking and behavior like wearing masks. As far as political/social aspects go we’ve all seen social/racial inequality and political-based unrest and protests that happened.
The clarity with which the “long-term social and economic consequences” was an approximation to the large-scale consequences of a pandemic in this case Covid-19 astounds/ed me.
The social, political, and cultural consequences can be hard to predict at the onset because of their complex nature. One of the things we learned in this class was the nature of Complex Systems and an important attribute (extremely important if you’re in a pandemic): Nonlinearity.
A complex system is a system with many interacting elements (like climate systems, the universe, the human brain, etc). By nature, complex systems are hard to predict because of their emergent properties (hard to model mathematically). They act in nonlinear ways, and they defy simple reductionism. A virus is a perfect example of an emergent simple system that impacts complex systems. In a pandemic, in life, and for the world in general, a need to understand how complex systems work and systems theory are paramount.
“In complex systems, one can think about linear interactions and complex or nonlinear interactions.” — “adding one more flu-like illness (as COVID-19 was presented) isn’t a linear event. Tipping points, phase transitions (water boiling or freezing), and cascades and avalanches (when a few small changes end up triggering massive shifts) are all examples of nonlinear dynamics in which the event doesn’t follow simple addition in its impacts — that’s why this coronavirus was never just about its R0 or CFR.” (Tufekci)
Not everything is deterministic (pre-determined to happen), and not everything is random (they have identifiable causes). We meander between seeing the random and determined.
Big History has insights and foresight into many interconnected complex systems and wicked challenges human beings face today. It’s not just global pandemics, but also inequality and climate change.
Human inequality can be traced back to when humans began to have an agricultural (food) excess, which allowed division of labor and led to some individuals (top of hierarchies) accumulating more information and resources than others.
Climate Change is a central challenge in the 21st century. In both the agricultural and industrial revolutions humans found ways to harness vast amounts of energy. If we can not use energy to continue our lives we become extinct. The current problem is our main sources of energy are unsustainable.
This got me thinking about why history matters broadly and what it can be used for, and in the following months, I began to piece together some answers.
History’s Cycle
One place, to begin with, is how history can produce patterns or similarities (a cycle) over time, which these dimension-based consequences are. These are patterns that can repeat themselves in some way, shape, or form when a pandemic or a plague transpires. Historical understanding, patterns, and similarities can broadly inform us on how to operate in the present and create better future outcomes.
Matthew Kester provides some insight on how history can be used as a tool in that sense to identify patterns and create understanding:
“One of the most common and enduring questions about the nature of the past is whether or not it has some deeper plot or pattern. Think of “connect-the-dots” puzzles you used to do when you were a kid. You look at a bunch of scattered dots on a page, each with a corresponding number. Scattered numbers are actually arranged into a pattern which is invisible at first glance. But as we connect dots, the pattern emerges. Applying this analogy to history, we can liken numbered dots to events. If we draw the right connections between events, the pattern emerges. And of course, it was there all the time.”
“From this perspective, History becomes much more than a chronicling of successive events. History becomes stories for living, and the purpose behind our forays into the past transcends mere curiosity. There is no “history for history’s sake.” History exists because we need it. It is a tool for us to use. And we use it constantly. We use it to instruct, to edify, and to warn. We use it to memorialize, to inspire, to entertain. We use it to unite and to justify. When we look around us and ask, “why is the world this way,” we look to history.
Aristotle famously advised “If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and development.” Stoic philosopher Cicero personalized this idea when he stated “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.” History matters. …
Recognizing appeals to history in public discourse, understanding historical arguments and learning to think critically about them — these are tools for living.”
(Matthew Kester)
Thinking in historical patterns allows us to map history to the present day realities of issues we face in this case Covid-19. Broadly and furthermore, history allows one to understand and connect the past with present day situations and challenges of different people other than us.
History’s Arrow
History’s arrow is the opposite of history’s cycle and patterns. It represents the straight path history takes and the impossibility of changing it.
The arrow represents the progression of historical occurrences that are distinct but connected and related through space and time.
The second-place history can help is in empathy, the ability to connect with others and understand/recognize another person’s perspective which might be different from your own. “Empathy is feeling with people”. I was first introduced to the concept of empathy in 2015 in Brené Brown’s video on Empathy and thought about how it can help change the world for the better. However, I had experiences that made me more ambivalent about empathy.
Particularly in the context of learning about “Human-Centered Design” (HCD — Design Thinking broadly) — I’d hear empathy a lot. Empathy is sort of prescribed in HCD as observing people, documenting what they do, and understanding people. Prescribed activities are surface level and I wasn’t sure if that can give anyone a deep sense and the why of what it means to be another person let alone accurately give us a feeling of “what it’s like to be in their shoes”?… I would continue to hear: “We need to empathize with our user”, “this problem requires deep empathy”, or “empathy at scale”. What does any of this tangibly mean?
Another nail in the coffin for my affinity towards empathy came from Don Norman’s empathy in a design article in 2019: Why I Don’t Believe in Empathic Design (I don’t exactly fully agree or disagree with this article)
I want to make it clear here I wasn’t being cynical about empathy, just trying to think about how it works “under the hood”. In short, there were periods of doubt, but also flashes of hope back then.
That attitude towards empathy changed suddenly almost randomly around late Dec. 2019 given my proclivities of thinking about things through a lens of history with these thoughts/statements/quotes from John Green:
(I first learned about Big History through John Green’s youtube channel Crash Course in 2017 with their series (it’s worth the watch))
“The opportunity of studying history, is the opportunity to experience empathy.”
“The biggest problem with being alive is that you can only see the world out of your eyes. You can only live inside of your skin, your consciousness. You can’t effectively imagine what it’s like to be someone else. But the study of history allows you to empathize better; it allows you to think more complexly about others. And that’s gonna be useful — in every single moment of your entire life.”
“Studying history and making genuine attempts at empathy helps us to grapple with the complexity of the world, not as we wish it were, but as we find it.” (John Green)
This immensely changed my perspectives and belief about empathy.
Studying history allows us to understand the present day by connecting dots in the past and identifying patterns that map to present-day realities. Empathy at its core is about understanding and connection. Understanding the history of everything allows us to connect with others and empathize better. Empathy (Understanding how the world works in general) in turn is a relevant concept for justice and innovation (How we progress as humanity). The concept of Historical Empathy can help.
