The list below is by Nassim Taleb, the author of “The Black Swan.” I appreciate it and find it effective. “Antifragility” equates to survival. Why would I spend time reading things I can’t put into practice? Other things? Well, for the fun of it, I suppose, and but some things are pathways rather than destinations, and this particular list is very useful.
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An antifragile way of life is all about finding a way to gain from the inevitable disorder of life. To not only bounce back when things don’t go as planned, but to get stronger, smarter, and better at continuing as a result of running into this disorder.
First, here are some principles that come from “Antifragile”:
- Stick to simple rules
- Build in redundancy and layers (no single point of failure)
- Resist the urge to suppress randomness
- Make sure that you have your soul in the game
- Experiment and tinker — take lots of small risks
- Avoid risks that, if lost, would wipe you out completely
- Don’t get consumed by data
- Keep your options open
- Focus more on avoiding things that don’t work than trying to find out what does work
- Respect the old — look for habits and rules that have been around for a long time
The general underlying principle here is to play the long game, keep your options open and avoid total failure while trying lots of different things and maintaining an open mind.
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My own simple rules are not likely to suit anyone else. They are not based on convention. Many women have a rule that they can’t go to bed without cleaning up the kitchen -- dishes washed, everything put away. My practice, which is not a rule, is to let things soak overnight. But my rule is to write a post for this blog every morning even if means there’s no time for housework. My practice has been to post it just after midnight that same night so posts will indexed by date in a regular sequence.
I’m thinking about changing this because now I have to stay up until midnight and I get too sleepy. The “old” I must respect is me, though I resent getting older, weaker, more forgetful, and all that. It’s not a tragedy -- just a nuisance. But something I learned as a young person is very helpful -- I learned to do-without and to not want things that aren’t possible. This was a product of a marriage where the uneven partnership (Bob much older and both of us devoted to his sculpture) meant that my reading, my time in general, and my taste in food and furnishings were simply impossible. By the time I started an independent life again, I had absorbed much of his. But not all.
Always I thought about what I needed to survive -- a table, a chair, a bed, bookshelves, a way to write. Then the things that were luxuries: books, cats, clothes I like, beautiful bedding, bowls and spoons, the pickiup, and a little shelf of odd things I’ll talk about another time. The telephone is an ambivalent thing. The television is not attached to broadcast or cable, just DVD’s. Netflix is a wonderful luxury. This computer is a GREAT enabler and luxury, but having to learn too much technology interferes with the writing. I don’t have a cell phone, the same as I don’t have a radio in the pickiup. I could do without television, telephone, even computer, if I had to. So long as I had pencil and paper. Even then, I could learn to memorize what I wrote like a person kept in the dark in solitary confinement.
I could not do without my mind. That’s the cruelest diminishment of old age, that I can’t remember names or where I put things. Some memories I can do without because if I can’t remember that I once could remember them, then they don’t matter much anyway. Between photos and my own bulging files, I can recover most things. But now I wish I’d bought a yearbook every year that I taught, that I had a photo directory of the whole Blackfeet tribe through the Sixties when I knew them. Now they are the grandparents of the adults I talk to. These present adults didn’t exist yet.
Secrecy and privacy are things I wanted to discard, but now I find it impossible. Not because I have anything to hide but because other people need to be let alone. I can’t praise them publicly though I passionately (not carnally) love them.
Security is one of the things I risk losing daily but not in the usual way. I lose when the neighbors come over to chainsaw limbs off the tree that is such a joy, or when I turn on the computer (like this morning) and find another pay-wall. iTunes wants a LOT of information and legal agreement to their terms or I won’t be allowed to proceed !!! Whaaaaaat? The only thing I use it for is to stream my NPR station because their land broadcast fails so much -- it’s tough to maintain translators and relays in this country. Fine. I’m already learning that silence in Valier is free. (You have to pay for it in other places.) But I have to buy drinking water.
The biggest threat to security is ironically the efforts of people to guarantee THEIR safety by constant vigilance and the imposition of rules that suit them. They become more and more over-reactive, more inclined to regulate and impose fees, more suspicious of everything different, more inclined to carry firearms and drive faster in bigger vehicles. They have never heard that story about how armor was not so much destroyed by the invention of firearms as it was by the nibbling of the leather hinges by mice. They seem to think they can only get rich by executing some major coup or scheme, like striking oil, not through the simple diligence of showing up for work every day and getting things done. Nevertheless, people here are kind and practical, more than some places.
I’ve kept a little woodstove in case both electricity and gas fail in winter. I hoard branches. So far the gas has never failed (though we’ve all grown suspicious of pipelines and there have been catastrophic explosions from leaks, like the one in Bozeman on the main street). Just last week the electricity here was off for more than an hour at 4AM. We never found out why. My internet feed shuts down my keyboard whenever there is a lot of local web traffic, but no one seems able to fix it. They’ve stopped even telling me they’re trying -- just deny that it has anything to do with them.
When I was in college as an undergrad (1957-1961) the world was hopeful in spite of catastrophic assassinations which someone evidently thought would make things go their way. We see that happening again today, though mostly it’s our government doing the dramatic killing in other people’s countries, while merely killing our own citizens with non-funding. Instead of killing Obama, they kill all he suggests. By the time I left Browning (1973) the response to the deaths of JFK and MLK Jr. had boomeranged into a new vision of what life was about. My soul was seized then and is still gripped by it. In fact, because I have access to news and conversation among thinking people through the Internet (Edge.org and TED Talks and all the H-humanities listservs, plus a host of other online organizations) my hope is robust. Antifragile. I do not despair.
My practice is to shop for necessities once a month at a county seat, which makes me dependent on my little freezer. My rule is to eat according to diabetes guidelines: no sugar, few carbs, high quality meat (no sausage), no sodas, lots of green stuff. That means less dependence on meds and possibly eventual freedom from them. Just now I’ve started a pot roast with no potatoes -- just carrots and onions. It’s beginning to smell pretty good. I enjoy the immense wealth of the senses. It’s opera day, if iTunes will let me stream WFMT. If not, I’ll sing to myself -- though it worries the cats. NOT.
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