The Economist wrote an article about 2014 being the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of WWI. Its main conclusion was that the war was a result of a complacency that festered in Europe, mainly the complacent attitude among politicians and business leaders that the commercial ties that existed between Britain and Germany were grounds enough to stave off war. Who would want to go to war and endanger all that money making? was the prevailing consensus. But this complacency blinded leaders to the many underlying issues that weren't being addressed and causing major riffs between nations and societies. Yet, European leaders continued to think to the end that the extensive business and commercial ties between Britain and Germany would prevent war, and if there was a war it would be a short one. How wrong they were.
Complacency is the scourge of Civilization. Nevertheless, it continues to occur. It naturally occurrence in societies that believe they have arrived and made it, thinking they have accomplished everything that can be accomplished and have triumphed over humankind’s major problems. Complacency takes things for granted. It is a form of arrogance and naivety. It engenders a false and dangerous optimism. It’s a corruptive force. A stagnation transpires as a result of it, which is why Civilization abhors it. It’s a death knell. It leads to unfortunate circumstances as the world saw in 1914.
The Economist sees signs of a parallel complacency in the world today, similar to the one that caused the first world war. It believes that world leaders are entertaining complacency in the same way, thinking that the geopolitical frictions that exist in the world today will never lead to a major conflict or a world war because of how interdepend and connected the world has become through business.
But the world today is very different from the one that existed before WWI broke out. It is much more complex and sophisticated than it was back then. There is much more going on and far more agitating forces occurring, leaving far less chance for the type of complacency to develop that set of WWI. The atmosphere before WWI was more rigid, clubby and deferential, and the reins of power more tightly held, creating an atmosphere that was vastly more conducive and ripe for complacency than it is today. Today we have far more diversity and vested interests competing and grating against each other so that if any complacency does set in it is soon an issue. It’s a far more fluctuating, corrosive world today, thus making it very difficult for complacency to gel or last for long. Moreover, because of history, entities work harder to avoid complacency because they know from experience that it is a spoiler.
Civilization abhors complacency. But even though complacency still rears it head Civilization has developed better means of keeping it at bay so that we don't find ourselves in a WWI situation. The atmosphere today is far different from what it was before the first world war. The tools to combat complacency back then were weak or didn't even exist as they do today. Even though there was a globalization prior to WWI it wasn’t anything like the robust, competitive force it is today. It was a more stayed world back then and it wasn’t so easy to displace the complacency that set in among the nations and businesses of the world. Today the world is of such relenting change in its politics and economics that entertaining any idea of complacency is done at ones peril. The relentless stream of social and business forces that continue to batter away in this world leaves little room for complacency to settle in for long.
Before WWI the world was a more unjust place than it is today. Even with all its faults, there is far more justice and recourse for injustices today than there ever was back then. The injustices that existed back then were like a complacency because they were mostly ignored by the centers of power. Back then there was very little talk of human rights and no global institutions like the UN to help enforce them. There was definitely more of a class system and discrimination around the world then as we’ve seen in the blockbuster television series "Downton Abby", where the class structure was par for the course. Downton Abby exuded complacency. But some of the characters in the show understood that the complacency was not sustainable and that things had to change if they were to survive and continue.
One reason why Civilization abhors complacency is because it leads to stagnation and entropy. At the beginning of the twentieth century and prior to WWI that’s what happen to Britain and its Empire. Britain believed and took it for granted that the sun would never set on its Empire, that it could just sit back and live off its achievements. The same thing happened to the Soviet Union and communism. Communism as a governing system eventually collapse because it also believed itself absolute and didn’t make any effort to change or improve, while the world around it was moving on. What ended the glory of those two former powers was the complacent notion that they had reached an end point in human progress and represented the ultimate in human governance.
A similar complacency almost brought down capitalism with the financial crises of 2008 and during the Great Depression. Arguably, a factor that led to the 2008 crises was the complacency that set in after it triumphed over communism as the world’s dominant economic system. With that victory over communism capitalism felt invisible, believing it could do no wrong. As a result the practitioners of capitalism took risks and gambles that caused untold damage. But why it didn’t collapse as did its form rival, communism, is because there was something unique about. It’s capitalism’s paradoxical nature, which the economist Joseph Schumpeter defined as “creative destruction”, that kept it afloat. Though this contradiction is what almost did it in, as Marx thought it would, it is also what saved it. Capitalism’s paradoxical nature is not only destructive but it also develops the mechanisms and resources to rebuild. This is what makes capitalism the exception to the rule, that even though it falls into complacency it also has the wherewithal to jolt itself out of it, to combat the inevitability of complacency and its destructive forces. In contrast, communism’s singular nature didn’t have the inner challenges or alternatives to rebuild itself. This is why capitalism survives, because of of its ability to overcome its own complacency and renew itself.
It is also past history and the lessons we’ve learned that makes the world less complacent than it once was. Today we have deterrents to complacency, especially when it comes to world wars. As The Economist pointed out, the existence of a nuclear weapons - the ultimate weapon, may very well be the deterrent to world wars. The nations of the world can no longer afford to be saber rattlers as they once were because of the threat that hangs over their heads - the likelihood that if the world was to go to war today of being completely annihilated by the nuclear weapons that are in the hands of many.
And that is probably the best way to combat complacency, having things in the hands of many, through diversity and broad participation. In diversity there is a lot of activity and agitation, keeping things alive and awake, preventing things from atrophying and falling into complacency.
