Acts of God, in vocational psychology dictionary

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Dictionary of Vocational Psychology

Acts of God

According to Super (1957, p. 263), acts of God can influence vocational adjustment and launch (or devastate) careers. Acts of God include unpredictable influences of nature such as earthquakes, floods, storms, or other natural events that affect economic activities and therefore careers. Some examples cited by Super include the earthquake in Antigua, Guatemala, of 1773, which left the city in ruins for well over a century, the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and various floods of American cities (e.g., Dayton, Ohio). Tornadoes can have focused, devastating impact on families, towns, and even small cities. The prolonged drought in the plains states of the 1930s which created the "dust bowl" similarly upended the careers of many, such as farmers from Oklahoma who moved West to California, even as it opened up better opportunities for even poorer families to move into the farms and towns they vacated.

Websites of interest

Amadeo Giannini (Time.com story). Immediately after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, he took his produce wagon to the office of the Bank of Italy, which he'd founded two years before, and rescued the savings of over $2 million. Then, when the other banks wanted to stay closed until they could sort things out, Giannini opened up a bank essentially on the street, loaning individuals and small businesses what they needed to get them through the crisis, on nothing more than their face and a signature. Giannini's bank largely invented consumer banking, home mortgages, and so on, and today his bank is the Bank of America. (Or more accurately, BankAmerica, which has now moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Charlotte, North Carolina. So in a convoluted way, the Giannini's response to the San Francisco earthquake is helping the property values in North Carolina today.)

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