Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” is a film that stars Orson Welles. You’ve heard the theme song for the movie a million times but probably didn’t know it:

What strikes me is one of the quotes from the film, probably the most famous:

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

In times of crisis they say heroes arise.  That’s the meaning. The same lesson comes from Chinese and Roman cutlure as well.