The paradoxical origin of trauma in the workplace

See this dude? He is single handedly responsible for all the TRAUMA you currently experience in the workplace.

Got your interest? Here’s why…

For most of human history, population was limited by food scarcity, and we existed as hunter gatherers, foraging in little bands that would move around and never get that big.

Then, something amazing.

So amazing and transformative that we take it for granted.

AGRICULTURE. Our ancestors put seeds in the ground and food would grow weeks or months later. Can you IMAGINE the difference that made? Suddenly people could, and had to, create permanent settlements to tend to their crops. This led to architecture, cities, and large class-based societies. Also wealth inequality because food was still scarce. And people fought over these scarce resources.

Tribes and constant warring over scarce resources made the world a traumatic place to live for thousands of years. Ideologies of different bands created further division and conflict. Scarcity caused even the relatively safe and stable human settlements to be traumatic places, but still nothing compared to the elements. People needed to be productive or they would hold the tribe back, hence the uncompromising work ethics that developed. Old ideologies traumatized and constrained people in many ways (they still do).

This generally traumatic and scarce way of life lasted until the early 20th century. That’s where the pictured dude comes in. His name is Fritz Haber. He was a German chemist, and devised a new way to synthesize ammonia. This led to beaucoup FERTILIZER. And a population EXPLOSION.

We’re getting to the workplace trauma, I PROMISE!

Consider the following facts:

✅ Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber process. Thus, the Haber process serves as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018.

✅ The world's farmers produce enough food to feed 1.5x the global population.

Get it?

Our ENTIRE economic system is a pre-Haber dynamic operating in a post-Haber world. It’s a conundrum that we all have to work so hard for what we get even though we could make hunger go away tomorrow if we really wanted…

And this causes deep existential dissonance for us, especially us business owners, who run the systems of commerce.

Here’s the paradox I’ve come to see. Communism kills the human spirit, forged by millennia of scarcity. We can’t redistribute our way out of this dynamic, even if much goes to waste.

So we and our teams need to show up and grind, hustle, because it’s what our spirits DEMAND.

But the thousand year-old scarcity narrative that drives us still causes a lot of stress and fear for people.

That’s the modern, post-Haber tension. The ONLY solution (I think) is awareness. Because our spirits DEMAND achievement, even in this age of abundance. I find awareness is the first step to reduce the trauma. How about you?

If you want to learn more, here is a great video about the moral enigma that is the life and work of Fritz Haber:

And a great podcast.