When hubris trumps good judgment, disasters follow
Isaac Monroe Cline possessed an immovable belief that no severe storm could harm Galveston, Texas. Despite nature’s hints throughout that summer of 1900 with its blistering heat and torrential rains, the city’s chief Weather Bureau meteorologist wrote earlier, “It would be impossible for any cyclone to create a storm wave which could materially injure the city.”
Cline’s boss, Willis Luther Moore, head of the U.S. Weather Bureau, disdained Cuban meteorologists, pioneers in hurricane prediction. Exuding a colonialist air of superiority in anything weather-related, he asserted control by banning all Cuban telegraph transmissions of weather alerts from Havana to the U.S.
Galveston citizens were therefore blindsided on Sept. 8, 1900, when winds over 120 miles per hour created a Leviathan storm surge, drowning the city and claiming more than 6,000 victims. The Jesuit director of Havana’s accomplished weather observatory at Real Colegio de Belen, Father Lorenzo Gangoiti, alerted Havana newspapers that a cyclone was heading toward Texas. Because of Moore’s order, their alarms were muzzled. In terms of fatalities, this remains the worst natural disaster in American history. A riveting account is told in Erik Larson’s “Isaac’s Storm.”
The past is a harsh teacher. We remain slow learners. Despite scientists’ persistent early warnings, New Orleans was unprepared
on Aug. 29, 2005, for terrifying winds and seas that took more than 1,800 people. Of Katrina’s numerous insults, one stands out. As Christopher Burns underscores in “Deadly Decisions,” because of the administration’s nodding heads, no one told President George W. Bush the facts about the local governments’ disarray and FEMA’S managerial ineptitude.
Our unremitting lineage of major disasters reveals that hubris — human arrogance — eclipses good judgment. Like the hubris of White Star Line president Bruce Ismay who, in April 1912, eager to have the Titanic set a new trans-atlantic crossing record, ignored repeated warnings of “icebergs ahead.”
Hubris is our original sin. Here’s a sidebar. India’s earliest account of the Great Flood, described in the ancient text Satapatha Brahmana, has Manu, an Indian version of Adam and Noah, not only warning about the coming deluge but also being rescued from it by a fish, the god Brahma in disguise. It’s not a human who saves the world.
While there is no one cause for hubris, consider our human fabric. We inherently dislike dissonance. So when we face information (like scientific findings on climate, environment, pollution, nuclear risk, gun control) violating our fundamental worldviews, we undergo degrees of inner tension. In response, we may then deny and “think” in reverse, reasoning from pre-set conclusions, making the world fit our conceptual map of it. We instinctively favor that which conforms to our own fortress of beliefs. Furthermore, as 18thcentury Scottish philosopher David Hume argued, this fortress is ultimately built on sentiment. What and how we think about something is often rooted in how we feel about it.
When encountering dissent, leaders and decision-makers in government, corporations, health care, and higher education often form committees. Smart step. But — committees of cognitive clones have a way of silencing the alarms, creating spin, and burying the facts. A good leader, on the other hand, will not surround herself with think-alikes, an ideological entourage afraid of making waves. Good leaders will instead invite dissent, the views of astute gadf lies challenging the status quo.
How far are we willing to tolerate inf lexibility, arrogance, and conceit? In her masterful “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin writes of Lincoln’s political genius that his personal disposition “enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings… to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes.” As always, the litmus test of good leadership boils down to character, particularly when facing the storm.