What do we learn from crises?

05/07/2025 Nilson Lattari

I read an article, a couple years ago, with Eugene Ionesco – the creator of Theatre of the Absurd, where the interviewer asked him if the arts were going through a moment of crisis. He answered that crises are welcome because they represent a renovation and interrupt a sequence of repetition in a popular art movement. This means, said Ionesco, that artists generally tend to reproduce the same things during a movement, and there is no renovation. In his opinion, a crisis in the arts announces a rebirth, when a new and different idea can flourish and open the door of the avant-garde. So, artists labelled as incomprehensible, without meaning, or scorned, who have long existed on the periphery, can offer a new perspective and take centre stage renew the arts.
In short, crises are signals of change, because changes are necessary.
When an art movement runs out of steam, it can be reimagined with a fresh perspective or become part of history. After wars, at least the last great ones, people tend to see the world in a new way. These changes affect our behaviour, like financial crises which wear out economic models, and then people have the opportunity to question their lives and beliefs.
Do we learn from crises? I wonder whether we actually learn something from them, or we simply survive by doing the same things. On the other hand, do we just insist on doing the same things in different way? Do we truly face crises and survive? In this case, only the privileged, rich, clever, and shrewd may overcome them. We forget the lessons of history and tend to repeat the same mistakes: I’m thinking of financial pyramids that have deceived incautious people over time.
We have faced financial and political crises throughout our lives, but have learnt little from them, driven by our ambition. The worst crises, meanwhile, are not those we create artificially, filled by our greed for wealth. Nature also goes through crises. In those cases, we don’t create them or sometimes we do, and we have no control over them. The world keeps spinning, regardless of our foolishness in dealing with nature and ourselves. We are in the midst of a natural crises, and nature acts on its own. We are insignificant beings living like supporting characters in the theatre of life.
Animals survive by following rules or instincts, but we insist on imposing our rules on nature and suffer the consequences.
We attack and defend nature and build barriers against it. But it is invincible, we cannot defeat it, and its power is immense. We need to learn from it and have dialogue with it. We are arrogant enough to imagine that the world belongs to us and will cease to exist without our presence but it is not true, the world will go on.
During the pandemic, we lived in social isolation and our presence outside diminished. Animals return to the forests and parks, water became cleaner, streets felt fresher, and the sky was less polluted. We stayed indoors, watching life through our windows, and our absence didn’t stop the world.
Many people long for Paradise and fear Hell. When we open our minds, we can learn from crises and realise the Paradise may be ere, on this blue ball spinning in the universe. Hell is the world we create by destroying this blue Paradise. Our life depends on ourselves, each of us building happiness and making room for others to come.
Comments on social media show that it’s not only silly arguments that provoke this wave of madness. There is another ingredient in these arguments: evil. Ignorance alone wouldn’t cause this. Ignorance is just not knowing that evil is insensitivity, a lack of humanity. Evil is a feeling found in some people who believe that ignoring or denying problems will create mentally healthy people in the future.
This combination is a poison that could destroy all of us.