A friend went to a “business breakfast” for sole traders, which included a man from a kitchen company talking about running marathons for “mental toughness”. The lead buzzword of the day, though, was “resilience”.

It has become ubiquitous. Resilience is a desirable quality in little children knocked over in the playground, and in global religions facing a wave of criticism and dissent. But it is more than that: it has become a body of theory, an area of study, an industry and almost a science.

Years ago, I found the term in the tsunami of jargon created by Ken Livingstone’s new London Assembly. He subsequently created the London Resilience Forum, in response to 9/11. “Resilience” then meant something like “pre-disaster and post-disaster preparedness”. It also meant a budget, staff, and 170 member organisations, all with their own “resilience forums” or “resilience teams”.