James Drogan

All civilizations face their fragilities.  Many residents of the world’s wealthiest nations, particularly Americans, have felt fortunate to live through a period largely insulated from shocks and disruptions.  This “vacation from history” enabled many to become accustomed to living at the efficient-but-fragile end of the robust-yet-fragile continuum.  In a world temporarily devoid of consequences, the slow erosion and increasing inelasticity of the country’s political, financial, socioeconomic, and ecological systems scarcely seemed to matter.  Now that a new, more volatile chapter has begun, those now-compromised systems have flipped from being engine of resilience to sources of fragility themselves.

Zolli, A., & Healy, A. M. (2012). Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back (1st Free Press hardcover ed). Free Press. p. 261