The Bitter Ironies of Historical Progress
We degrade and doom our descendants by overcoming harsh environments
- “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
In the postapocalyptic novel, Those Who Remain, Hopf wrote a much memeified line, quoted above. It’s worth pondering that epigram’s ironies, but first we need to understand what it means.
The “strong” people are those who are independent and resilient so that they can adapt to various environments, including harsh ones. “Weak” people are dependent on environments that spoil them, so that they’re decadent and can’t adapt to suboptimal conditions.
Strong people, then, can overcome “hard times,” such as postapocalyptic disaster zones, or the chaotic conditions of rundown societies. The more the strong people apply their wisdom and grit, the more they improve the environment so that the environment adapts to them. Social conditions improve because of their know-how, resolve, and labour.
The first irony, then, is that instead of breaking the strong people, the harsh environment bends to their will because as people rather than animals we’re supremely adaptable. Hard times tend not to extinguish us since our…
