#91 - Resilience as a Superpower: History’s Darkest Irony

I want to return today to an episode of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast that I discussed two weeks ago, this time from a different perspective.

In that episode, Carlin explores the horrific scale of the transatlantic slave trade, which saw an estimated 12.5 million Africans forcibly shipped to the Americas and the Caribbean. One of the most chilling insights he offers is the idea that part of what made Africans so tragically "valuable" in the eyes of slave traders was, ironically, their biological superpower: immunity.

Over countless generations, Africans had developed resistance to a range of tropical diseases that proved deadly to outsiders. In another time, such resilience might have been a point of pride. But in the age of colonial expansion, it became a reason for exploitation. Immune systems honed over millennia made Africans far more likely to survive in the deadly disease environments of the New World, unlike the Indigenous populations, who were decimated by European pathogens, or the Europeans themselves, who struggled to adapt to the climate and conditions.

And so, resilience became a liability. Immunity made Africans more "suitable" for forced labor in plantations across the Americas and the Caribbean. What should have been a strength turned into a sentence.

Imagine surviving generations of disease only to have that very endurance mark you as a target for enslavement, your strength turned against you, your resilience repackaged as a commodity. How this could happen? If you’re stronger, shouldn’t you be able to protect yourself and your family?

Carlin’s point underscores a deeper truth about human history: individual traits, no matter how exceptional, are powerless in the face of organized, collective power.

This proverb is often attributed to African folk wisdom, although there is no direct evidence that it comes from a specific continent or country. It echoes however the need of balance between individual and collective.

According to Edward Wilson the most integrated and best-cooperating groups generally outperform groups of selfish individualists. It can also be put this way: a selfish person will defeat an altruist, but a group of altruists will defeat a group of selfish people.

He therefore proposed group selection as the main evolutionary mechanism, in which evolutionary traits are shaped at the level of groups, not just individuals or genes.

Although group selection remains a controversial idea in evolutionary biology, history seems to back it up. Again and again, the most tightly coordinated societies have overpowered scattered, disunited ones. It wasn’t just African individuals who were outmatched; it was African communities overwhelmed by the collective machinery of colonial conquest.

This historical lens challenges modern ideas about resilience. Popular culture often treats resilience as a personal trait, something you build within yourself, like mental muscle. But if history is any guide, individual grit alone rarely wins in the face of large-scale forces. We need one another and this story should be a reminder of the need to stay humble and avoid overestimating our individual abilities.

Instead of striving to be superhuman, perhaps we should strive to be super-connected, not only for the greater good, but for our own survival.

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References

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - Show 68 - BLITZ Human Resources

Wilson, E. O. (2012). The social conquest of earth. New York: WW Norton & Company.