We often forget an old truth: we don’t appreciate what we have until we lose it. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of peace - whether in a society, an organization, or even a well-functioning machine. No one wonders why or how as long as things work as expected. But the moment something breaks, suddenly everyone wants to know who is responsible and what went wrong.
This says a lot about how we think and operate as a society - we give more credit to those who fix problems than to those who stop them from happening in the first place. The people who quietly keep things from falling apart usually don’t get noticed because nothing ever goes wrong on their watch.
How a Friend Taught Me the Cost of Prevention
A friend once worked as a technician to maintain a hospital’s X-ray equipment. His job was primarily preventative - he regularly inspected and fine-tuned the machines to ensure they ran smoothly. And they did. They ran so well for so long that some of his coworkers began questioning whether he had any real work. “Everything works perfectly - what does he even do here?”
Frustrated, he changed his approach. He stopped intervening preventatively and began letting the inevitable minor issues occur. As soon as a machine failed - often due to something simple like a blown fuse or a misaligned sensor - he’d step in to “fix” the problem. But this time, everyone noticed. His role became visible. People began thanking him for “resolving” the issue quickly, unaware that the very problems they now praised him for fixing could have been prevented in the first place.
What he did didn’t change - just how he went about it. But suddenly, people saw him differently. That shift says a lot about us: we’re quicker to praise those who clean up messes than those who ensure the mess never happens.
Taleb and the Hidden Cost of Prevention
In The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses this phenomenon in the context of uncertainty and decision-making. He describes a particular form of societal ingratitude - one where we fail to reward those who prevent negative outcomes because those outcomes never become visible.
One of his key examples involves the idea of securing cockpit doors in airplanes before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Imagine, Taleb writes, if someone had successfully pushed for reinforced cockpit doors in the 1990s. The tragic events of September 11 might never have occurred. But instead of being hailed as a hero, that person likely would have been dismissed as paranoid or criticized for wasting resources on an “unlikely” threat. Because no one would have seen what was prevented, the preventive action would have appeared unnecessary.
Taleb calls this “the problem of silent evidence” - we only see what happened, not what didn’t happen. In other words, prevention erases its proof, and with it, the social rewards.
Crisis Managers vs Preventative Architects
In almost every domain, from national security to IT systems, we lionize the crisis manager - the firefighter, the troubleshooter, the person who swoops in when everything is on fire. And they do deserve praise. But we often forget the invisible architects - those who built the fire-proofing in the first place or designed the systems to prevent chaos from emerging.
This skewed reward system has dangerous consequences. It encourages people to allow problems to surface so they can be seen fixing them. In politics, it results in reactive leadership - short-term solutions to long-term problems. In business, it leads to firefighting cultures where the loudest problem-solvers get promoted, even if their negligence or short-sightedness created the issues in the first place.
Why Do We Think This Way?
Human cognition is wired for narrative and cause-effect thinking. We crave visible change, dramatic moments, and heroes we can point to. Preventative action lacks that drama. It’s the difference between the story of someone rescuing a child from drowning - and someone who quietly built a fence around the pool years ago.
Peace, stability, and resilience don’t make headlines. Disasters do.
The Wisdom of Recognizing Peace
To build better systems and societies, we need to value the unseen work. We must learn to reward the uneventful day, the smooth operation, the long stretch of “nothing happening” - because that is often the result of effort we don’t see.
We can start by rethinking our workplace, school, and government encouragements. We can teach children and teams to solve problems and look for weak points before failure. We can publicly celebrate those who design out the need for intervention, not just those who clean up the mess.
Because ultimately, peace is not the default - it’s an achievement. And its value becomes tragically clear only when it’s gone.
Let’s not wait for war to understand the worth of peace.
