One of the few survivors of the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944 was a handicapped boy. The tragedy has some lessons for us that we still haven't really learned.
As was common in those days, the huge tent had been made waterproof with paraffin wax, which was applied by dissolving it in gasoline and soaking the tent in it. The resulting tent was a disaster just waiting for a spark, which it got 20 minutes into the first act.
Two of the exits were blocked with the cages that had brought the large animals, leaving only one escape route. The crowd panicked and rushed the only exit, producing a logjam of people that trapped many people inside.
One handicapped boy (that I can't find the reference for right now) figured out that there was simply no way he would ever get through that crowd, turned around, looked through the bleachers, and headed that way instead. He and some others escaped under the edge of the tent. The tent may have had to be cut to do that, but carrying folding pocket knives was normal for kids then so that was possible.
But, if you look at the picture above, you can see that very few people are coming out under the edge. Why not?
One of the problems with fire escapes is that people, in a panic, revert to their trained behaviors. These people were trained to use the exit, not to get their clothes dirty climbing under the bleachers, not to damage other people's property such as the tent, etc. So, they fixated on trying to get out the normal exits.
This is a problem with all fire exits, which students are conditioned repeatedly in school not to use, and then, in an actual fire, may simply forget are there because they never used them. It is surprisingly hard to imagine and then change to a brand new behavior in a time of crisis.
It may be that similar behaviors are true at national levels. After World War II, there is no question that England, though damaged, was in better shape than Japan, which had been devastated. The paradoxical result was that England had enough left of its centuries old technology to hang on to, and, having won, didn't have a motivation to change. It rebuilt poorly, trying to hold on to the material past, and largely fell from international importance.
Japan, on the other hand, had no old material infrastructure left to hang on to, and had to admit that what they had been doing had failed. They held on to their social values instead, and transitioned to a modernization and rejuvenation program that carried them to being one of the top economies in the world today, with the world's most admired company, Toyota. And, in the process, they got brand new material infrastructure.
The point is that sometimes, losing is winning. Sometimes, we have to get a 2x4 across the side of the head to let go of some old way that is not working anymore, and look around for new ways that might work. And, sometimes, we can find them.
Hanging on to material is the key to a common monkey trap. A coconut has a small hole made in the side, just big enough for an empty monkey paw to fit through. Then some wonderful nuts or food is put inside, and the coconut chained to the ground. The monkey comes, reaches in, grabs a huge handful of nuts, then cannot get it's paw back out. But, the average monkey will not let go, so the hunters can simply walk up and put a net over it at this point. The "trap" part is all in the monkey's head. He could let go and get away at any time.
A lot of southeast Michigan, where I live, appears to be in a mourning state for a successful manufacturing past that is not going to come back soon. Whether this is a blessing or a curse really depends on how it is taken, whether we act like England or Japan.
And like the handicapped boy, we probably have the tools we need with us already, but may need to get our clothes dirty to succeed. The walls around us are just like the tent walls - they can be cut through, and block us only in our minds and habits.
The last can become first, if they look for another way to do things. The reality isn't that it's a long way to the end of our problems, so much as that it's a long way to THAT way out of our problems.
As the Japanese found, social strength more than made up for a low score on technology. The only thing between us and success is a set of beliefs and habits that we need to reexamine. Some material things we may need to let go of in order to get our society in order first, and then come back to them and more later. That seems to be where this opportunity to move on is getting stuck.
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