The Grail of existence is to become antifragile, meaning to become stronger after each shock, much like the muscles of a bodybuilder after each workout. Why is it important to become antifragile, and why is it so difficult to achieve?
Antifragility allows us to navigate an uncertain world and benefit from it. As biological beings made of carbon, we naturally fear death. This fear causes us to approach the world with distrust and sometimes extreme caution. Becoming antifragile would free us from this fear, turning us into adventurers. Antifragility provides the power to grow stronger after each crisis, encouraging us to thrive through volatility, moving from crisis to crisis.
Our Cultures Are Built on Robustness
Developing antifragility is challenging because we have been educated within cultures that predominantly favor resilience. Whether it’s marriage, work, or food, everything is designed to protect us from crises. We generally consume the same foods and don’t experiment with new plants or roots to discover new nutrients. Our ancestors took those risks for us, and some even died for it. It’s much wiser to stick to familiar foods. Our work is often reduced to a limited set of skills, turning us into specialists. The specialization of labor encourages us to become experts to derive profit, but this specialization can easily falter during a crisis. When an industry faces upheaval, many professions can become obsolete, as we’ve seen in the past and continue to witness today with the direct impact of artificial intelligence on work.
Social structure also relies on robustness, starting with marriage contracts meant to provide guarantees for both parties. However, during a crisis—such as a divorce—both parties often part ways feeling weakened, as the experience is traumatic for most. You might argue that repeated relationships can foster antifragility, but I would contend that the psychological effects are often negative. In my observations, emotional instability tends to create fragility rather than antifragility, at best resulting in robustness.
Overall, our culture is resilient, reflected in the art and beliefs we hold. It’s clear why developing antifragility is difficult: our framework differs, necessitating a complete reevaluation of our education to discover antifragility.
The Necessary Fragility
Why are we fragile? I would say it’s because it makes us dependent. Today, you perform a specialized job that allows you to buy food with the money you earn. You don’t need to know how to farm or hunt to sustain yourself. This apparent lack of constraint makes you reliant on the system. In the event of a severe food crisis, you might find yourself unable to feed yourself. Your employer and national government are aware of this, driving you to work hard without questioning too much. Specialization is a symptom of our fragility, even though it allows for greater enrichment. Ironically, this individual fragility can lead to collective antifragility: the system that employs you can easily rebound by hiring cheaper replacements, meaning your apparent fragility nourishes antifragility elsewhere.
Reconnecting with the Hunter-Gatherer Within Us
In contrast to specialized employees, there exists our distant ancestor, a being inherently antifragile. In times of food crisis, they could easily switch from one diet to another. Their nomadism made them antifragile because they learned new skills as they moved and encountered new tribes. While these encounters could lead to conflict, they also exemplify the counterintuitive nature of antifragility: sometimes, certain members of a group must perish for the whole to survive and become stronger as a result (individual fragility and collective antifragility often go hand in hand).
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