Writing Through The Madness of Our Times

The art of paper marbling, this beautiful work is from Florence, Italy

I like to close my eyes and think about a specific moment in history.

In my imagination it goes like this: There is eight of them—young, vibrant and brimming with excitement. On this sunny morning in Istanbul they are about to board a horse-drawn carriage stationed in front of the Topkapi Palace. It is the first time they are traveling anywhere, let alone daring to make a journey that will take them across borders. They hide their worries from each other. They are all smiles and jokes and good cheer. But underneath, the fear is palpable. They know they are going away for good, turning their backs on all that is familiar. From now on everything will be new and unknown. They are abandoning the comfort of home, leaving behind their native land.

The year is 1554.

They are journeying from Constantinople to Vienna. Nestled within a velvet-lined chest adorned with mother-of-pearl, they huddle together, even though it is not cold. If anything, it is a bit suffocating inside, and dark, too. As hours grow into days, they become bored and restless, increasingly eager to get out of this confined space. How they long for sunlight!

‘Move aside,’ complains one of them to his friend. ‘You are crushing me.’

‘And where do you expect me to go? As though I have the liberty to choose."

They quarrel occasionally, but for the most part, they talk about what lies ahead. Their future. They wonder if the residents of Austria will welcome them warmly and kindly. Will they be cherished and valued, or dismissed as ‘foreigners’ and coldly cast aside? Will they be able to bloom and flourish there, or simply wilt and shrivel in the shadows? Their fate is shrouded in uncertainty. Beyond their snug enclosure, the world bustles—the carriage clatters onward, the horses gallop faster, carrying them ever closer to Europe.

The eight unusual passengers in this story are tulip bulbs, sent from Ottoman lands, and this is the beginning of a new era in the West that will someday be labeled by historians as Tulipmania.

Tulip bulbs, as soon as they arrived in Vienna, were distributed to Antwerp and Amsterdam. Everywhere they reached they swiftly became popular. Mindblowingly popular. They were beautiful, different, new, colourful, exotic, and as they were able to survive harsh weather conditions they could be planted in diverse environments.

For the next decades, Dutch merchants were at the heart of the new enterprise, making tulips a much-desired luxury item. The business became so lucrative that, at some point, it yielded a whopping 400% profit.

Suddenly, tulips were more precious than gold. More precious than diamonds. Everyone fell for the frenzy: nobles, merchants, sailors, farmers, clerks…. people started to sell their possessions and mortgage their homes and their farms in order to be able to buy merely a few flower bulbs. The ultimate drive was always and always, profit. Making money was a goal in itself, not to achieve a more comfortable or fulfilling or meaningful life, but as a means to making more money. Some members of the society became very rich very quickly. Prices rose, and rose, and rose, until, in 1637, it all came crashing down.

Our knowledge of this period is influenced by a fascinating book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In it, the Scottish author and poet Charles Mackay argued that there were moments in world history when irrational and speculative behaviour spread so fast there was almost no time to process anything. Collective identities became so dominant that it was hard to think outside of them as you were catapulted from one moment to the next.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

It is interesting that Mackay found two antidotes to mass hysteria:

a. Slow down and take time to observe, examine and contemplate

b. Do not be an absolute follower of any absolutist group

Mackay seems to say that a cognitive flexibility is necessary to analyse a subject, any subject, from multiple angles, not just one static perspective. This is the process that the Irish author and philosopher Iris Murdoch referred to as “un-selfing.”

It is worth noting that there is no solid consensus among contemporary historians as to the precise causality of events of Tulipmania, or how widespread was the cultural obsession or how deeply it permeated and rocked the financial markets. However, the concept can be used as a powerful symbol—and warning—for all kinds of phenomena that spread at an uncontrollable pace, only to be understood in hindsight, once the dust has finally settled.

As a novelist, I find several aspects of this story particularly relevant to our times: Today we are living in an age of hyper-information, rapid consumption, instant gratification, and deep polarisation—an era wherein our epistemological views, perceptions, and judgments happen at an accelerated pace, all within the confines of entrenched tribal identities. In light of this, I cannot help but wonder:

Are we, perhaps, caught in the grip of yet another mania, one whose true scope and consequences we may only grasp in hindsight?

How is it that we human beings, all of us, can easily get caught up and swept up in the currents of mass hysteria or collective delusion? What is it that causes rationality, empathy, compassion and critical thinking to slip away in times of change, confusion and uncertainty?

And perhaps most crucially, is there a way to step outside of the frenzy, to slow down, and take precious moments to reflect on what is unfolding before us, by re-connecting not only with each other as fellow and equal human beings of one humanrace, but also by re-connecting with ancestral wisdom and the intelligence of nature?

Tulipmania might feel like a very different episode from our present-day Infomania, but when it all comes crashing down, the outcome could be equally devastating.