{"title":"From worshipping Tyche to playing with wild cards","authors":"Justine Walter","doi":"10.1111/1468-5973.12543","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>In his Physics, Aristotle acknowledges the role of Tyche, the Greek equivalent of contingency. His home, the Greek peninsula, was, and is today, regularly struck by natural hazards. Ancient records document that they wrought substantial damage to the infrastructure and political integrity of communities. Lacking reliable forecasting systems, for the ancient Greeks any of these hazards was contingent, even though there existed accepted interpretations of what (or who) caused these phenomena. Roughly 2.500 years later, future studies call sudden, unpredictable events like these ‘wild cards’. Occurring with a low probability but a substantial impact, wild cards pose challenges to social, political, and economic stability. Just as natural hazards unexpectedly interrupted and transformed social, political, and economical life in ancient communities, wild cards have the potential to disrupt current and future societies and economies. With the modern world increasingly complex and interconnected, wild cards will increase in frequency, likelihood, and impact. More than ever, local calamities will show global effects. To mitigate these effects and enable a fast recovery, creative approaches are needed. A gaze into how the societies of the distant past successfully coped with the wild cards that hit them, may thus yield inspiration for disaster risk reduction in the Anthropocene.</p>","PeriodicalId":47674,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5973.12543","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MANAGEMENT","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In his Physics, Aristotle acknowledges the role of Tyche, the Greek equivalent of contingency. His home, the Greek peninsula, was, and is today, regularly struck by natural hazards. Ancient records document that they wrought substantial damage to the infrastructure and political integrity of communities. Lacking reliable forecasting systems, for the ancient Greeks any of these hazards was contingent, even though there existed accepted interpretations of what (or who) caused these phenomena. Roughly 2.500 years later, future studies call sudden, unpredictable events like these ‘wild cards’. Occurring with a low probability but a substantial impact, wild cards pose challenges to social, political, and economic stability. Just as natural hazards unexpectedly interrupted and transformed social, political, and economical life in ancient communities, wild cards have the potential to disrupt current and future societies and economies. With the modern world increasingly complex and interconnected, wild cards will increase in frequency, likelihood, and impact. More than ever, local calamities will show global effects. To mitigate these effects and enable a fast recovery, creative approaches are needed. A gaze into how the societies of the distant past successfully coped with the wild cards that hit them, may thus yield inspiration for disaster risk reduction in the Anthropocene.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management is an invaluable source of information on all aspects of contingency planning, scenario analysis and crisis management in both corporate and public sectors. It focuses on the opportunities and threats facing organizations and presents analysis and case studies of crisis prevention, crisis planning, recovery and turnaround management. With contributions from world-wide sources including corporations, governmental agencies, think tanks and influential academics, this publication provides a vital platform for the exchange of strategic and operational experience, information and knowledge.