My post on Resilience as a Millennial Word has drawn a strong and smart response. A few respondents posted directly on the blog (Thanks!) but here are a few excerpts from messages emailed to me. They raise some interesting questions.
Rob Tempio of Princeton Press writes “It is THE word of the moment. I have been tracking it for a few years now and it’s amazing how prescient the zeitgeist was in starting to think about it.”
Gary Pence from the Lutheran Seminary in San Francisco points to the Oxford English Dictionary, which shows that the word has been around for a long time, at least since the 1620s. That makes the surge of usage in recent years all the more dramatic.
Charles Nathan, a graduate student in political science at Duke, thinks one passage really resonates with millennials: “ .. in a time when the economy has a bipolar disorder, when racism seems here to stay, when climate change delivers punch after punch, when relationships have a hard time blossoming into love ..”.
Somme other respondents are cautiously optimistic in comparison to my bleak comments, for example former ambassador Bob Pelletreau: “ … after the Trump election in 2016, I began using the word "resilience" in my various invocations, both secular and religious, to express my faith that the country would recover from this gigantic misstep. … to me the word went beyond "endurance" to include an implication of activism and even a little bit of revenge, much the same sentiments that are contained in the current administration's call to "build back better."
Nick Maki, now in business in the Pacific Northwest, and not so far from a millennial himself, sends a salutary warning:
“ … the HBR article you linked gave an example of someone who showed resilience during a recession by taking the opportunity to find a new career. How is it that we can praise Edison for sticking with it in the face of failure at the same time we praise someone else for their resilience in swapping career paths? I think there's a risk here of making resilience just a proxy for eventual success.“ Good point, Nick. We need to look more closely into how resilience works.
Hunter Rawlings, man of many presidencies, answered my question about whether the term applied at institutional or civic levels by quoting the Corinthians’ characterization of the Athenians in the first book of Thucydides, especially 1.70.7: “ The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. “
Adrian Badias, an artist in Puerto Rico, notes an oddity inn the way resilience works: “… resilience is something that one speaks about - safely, on the rebound, from either side, but not really while caught … in the midst of a traumatic episode. “
Michael Fontaine and Ellen Finkelpearl have posted valuable comments on the site itself, both stressing, inter alia, the emphasis on endurance in Latin texts, such as the Aeneid and Consolations, and similar works. Fontaine, indeed, has “ just completed a translation of a Renaissance reconstruction of Cicero’s Consolatio. “That was the speech/philosophical treatise he wrote himself to pull himself out of grief after his daughter died. He used . arguments to pull back from the brink and try to get his life back.” Why not a closer look at resilience in Latin texts, after all, the word derives from Latin!
Ellen Finkelpearl’s comment on the blog site points to another issue I glided over in my posting- women and resilience. There’s some reason to think that women both then and now are more resilient than men. Maybe they have to be, given the difficulties they have encountered over the centuries. But if so, how? That opens an even wider question: Is resilience innate or can it be learned? .
And T. A. Barron, author of I don’t know how many books for children, has sent me thinking about the link between resilience and story-telling, a.k.a. myth.
Finally, Michael Lurie, now in Providence Rhode Island, focused on the distinction I’ve been drawin between resilience as endurance, and as a leap forward: “ With the notion of 'strong resilience’ you are getting ‘dangerously' close to Nietzsche’s notion of the Greek ‘pessimism of strength’, which is obviously the term I’d prefer. “
Well, I can live with that!
--
Enough for the time being. But don’t hesitate to post comments on the blog itself. It’s easy and better than my excerpting.
Many thanks!
June 9, 2021
Rob Tempio of Princeton Press writes “It is THE word of the moment. I have been tracking it for a few years now and it’s amazing how prescient the zeitgeist was in starting to think about it.”
Gary Pence from the Lutheran Seminary in San Francisco points to the Oxford English Dictionary, which shows that the word has been around for a long time, at least since the 1620s. That makes the surge of usage in recent years all the more dramatic.
Charles Nathan, a graduate student in political science at Duke, thinks one passage really resonates with millennials: “ .. in a time when the economy has a bipolar disorder, when racism seems here to stay, when climate change delivers punch after punch, when relationships have a hard time blossoming into love ..”.
Somme other respondents are cautiously optimistic in comparison to my bleak comments, for example former ambassador Bob Pelletreau: “ … after the Trump election in 2016, I began using the word "resilience" in my various invocations, both secular and religious, to express my faith that the country would recover from this gigantic misstep. … to me the word went beyond "endurance" to include an implication of activism and even a little bit of revenge, much the same sentiments that are contained in the current administration's call to "build back better."
Nick Maki, now in business in the Pacific Northwest, and not so far from a millennial himself, sends a salutary warning:
“ … the HBR article you linked gave an example of someone who showed resilience during a recession by taking the opportunity to find a new career. How is it that we can praise Edison for sticking with it in the face of failure at the same time we praise someone else for their resilience in swapping career paths? I think there's a risk here of making resilience just a proxy for eventual success.“ Good point, Nick. We need to look more closely into how resilience works.
Hunter Rawlings, man of many presidencies, answered my question about whether the term applied at institutional or civic levels by quoting the Corinthians’ characterization of the Athenians in the first book of Thucydides, especially 1.70.7: “ The deficiency created by the miscarriage of an undertaking is soon filled up by fresh hopes; for they alone are enabled to call a thing hoped for a thing got, by the speed with which they act upon their resolutions. “
Adrian Badias, an artist in Puerto Rico, notes an oddity inn the way resilience works: “… resilience is something that one speaks about - safely, on the rebound, from either side, but not really while caught … in the midst of a traumatic episode. “
Michael Fontaine and Ellen Finkelpearl have posted valuable comments on the site itself, both stressing, inter alia, the emphasis on endurance in Latin texts, such as the Aeneid and Consolations, and similar works. Fontaine, indeed, has “ just completed a translation of a Renaissance reconstruction of Cicero’s Consolatio. “That was the speech/philosophical treatise he wrote himself to pull himself out of grief after his daughter died. He used . arguments to pull back from the brink and try to get his life back.” Why not a closer look at resilience in Latin texts, after all, the word derives from Latin!
Ellen Finkelpearl’s comment on the blog site points to another issue I glided over in my posting- women and resilience. There’s some reason to think that women both then and now are more resilient than men. Maybe they have to be, given the difficulties they have encountered over the centuries. But if so, how? That opens an even wider question: Is resilience innate or can it be learned? .
And T. A. Barron, author of I don’t know how many books for children, has sent me thinking about the link between resilience and story-telling, a.k.a. myth.
Finally, Michael Lurie, now in Providence Rhode Island, focused on the distinction I’ve been drawin between resilience as endurance, and as a leap forward: “ With the notion of 'strong resilience’ you are getting ‘dangerously' close to Nietzsche’s notion of the Greek ‘pessimism of strength’, which is obviously the term I’d prefer. “
Well, I can live with that!
--
Enough for the time being. But don’t hesitate to post comments on the blog itself. It’s easy and better than my excerpting.
Many thanks!
June 9, 2021