Personal Fragility

In the prior post I opened the discussion of anti-fragility and fragility, focusing for the most part on large entities like nations and economies. In this post I want to address how the framework tells us why we as individuals (and small groups like families) are fragile. The next post will continue the discussion and suggest how we might become more anti-fragile and what that means for us and for those around us. 

We know that a system or organism is anti-fragile if it can grow or improve when subjected to certain types of shocks or stressors. Being fragile, on the other hand, refers to an entity that responds poorly to stressors or disruptions. We also know that entities (humans for this post) can be anti-fragile in one arena and fragile in another, and can be either in degrees. A person might be anti-fragile toward investment disruptions because she has spread her wealth over a wide number and types of financial opportunities, possibly including gold under the bed. But she might be fragile in her relationships with co-workers because she has a high need to be liked. I am some degree less fragile to my anger than I was before I started working on the issue. But at a deeper level this really means that I am less fragile to not getting my way, which is what much anger is all about, protestations of angry people to the contrary notwithstanding. 

What does it mean to have personal fragility? As mentioned, mostly it is being harmed and possibly diminished by challenges from people or events. This harm arises mainly from our need to have things work exactly as we want them to. Since nature generally does not oblige, we suffer, and we generally inflict that on others.  

Where does this fragility come from? Two big sources are the views, beliefs and attitudes we have about ourselves and the world, and our emotional needs. As I have mentioned in previous posts, some views we have about ourselves, such as that we are objective, fair, inclusive, compassionate and tolerant, may well be partially or totally false. Views about the world are often similarly dubious, such as that there is a single and simple Answer to everything; that humans are infinitely perfectible; that things can be seen and understood solely in black and white terms; or that a lot of or no government will solve all societal problems. These simplistic nostrums clearly make a person or group fragile. Even if these views are not outright wrong (I happen to think they are), they are at best incomplete. Held as correct or complete when they are neither pushes the one holding them into fragility because reality will win out, one way or the other. 

Personal needs are also a huge factor in our fragility. People with high emotional needs are very likely to be fragile since they MUST have a certain outcome in stressful  situations, and respond unhealthily if they do not get it. Examples of these include the need to be right, for certainty, to win, to be loved, to precipitate conflict, to be secure, for order, to control, to be appreciated, or to be admired. At some level we all have needs like this, but they only become problematic beyond a certain point, different for each person---and for those who think they have no such needs, it’s best to lie down until the thought goes away. This needful state dictates that only one outcome is possible---a fulfillment of the need. But since the need is primarily the result of inner emptiness, it can never be fulfilled from outside. It is insatiable. For that reason, absenting great personal inner work or therapy, the person’s futile efforts never cease. Fragility is “institutionalized.

 

For those with high personal needs, each encounter with a stressor brings emotional upset, especially if it is from another person. I know a very bright and charming man whose sense of self is so delicate that he is endlessly on the look-out for slights and criticisms, most of which he manufactures. He is fragile to his very high need for validation and that creates unpleasantness in interactions with others. His need, like all such, is based on fear (terror?), in this case that someone will call into question who he is, which in his view they do constantly with their “insults.” 

Beyond the big fragility-inducing aspects such as false beliefs and major needs, simple everyday upsets are the main contributors to fragility. Some examples: The man in the market check-out line who wants to chat with the checker, distracting her. The driver who cuts you off. The spouse who sulks whenever he is offended. The diner near you whose voice could not get any louder if she were screaming. The friend who, in any discussion, liberally uses sarcasm. The person who, under the guise of righteousness, allows his anger to dictate his responses. A person who uses the counter-punch technique to vanquish others. The guilt-tripper. The list is endless, but the point is clear. We will encounter situations like this all the time, and if we respond poorly to them we have fragilized ourselves, and we pay the price. 

But there is more to these stories. People acting in these ways are clearly fragile themselves as they respond badly to difference or to upset, or who act in ways that ignore the well-being of others (loud diner). They all want something that they think or feel they can only get if they misbehave, often using the highly manipulative techniques mentioned above. Of course, there is no conscious recognition of this misbehavior. If there were, the positive stories they tell themselves would prove false, and that is unacceptable. 

This is not to say that all emotional upset indicates chronic fragility. Situational fragility can often be perfectly normal and even healthy. The loss of a loved one does not call for stoic pretending that all is well. Not feeling loss and great sadness is unhealthy, and, paradoxically, an indication of fragility. 

As we saw in the last post, fragility is exportable. In the personal realm responding badly to those acting inappropriately, as cited above, is illustrative. A particularly interesting example is raising children. Over-protective parents raise fragile children, ones who cannot deal well with distress or setbacks, whether those are physical, emotional or intellectual. Less protective parents raise children to be anti-fragile by ensuring that those children experience and learn from normal life challenges and disappointments. The latter are anti-fragile because they have reserves of energy and response (options) that take into account often difficult situations that they might experience. The fragile children have no such reserves.  

The challenging thing for parents is that they have to accept or even encourage in their children randomness, adventures, self-responsibility, mistakes, hurts, messes, uncertainty, and self discovery. But some do it anyhow, meaning they are anti-fragile (not uncaring) to their children’s troubles and development. Fragile parents, on the other hand, live in endless anxiety knowing they must be constantly on guard for the next challenge from which they must protect their child. Since this is impossible, they live a life filled with fear and anxiety.  

Most people have no idea that they are fragile, or that they are exporting fragility; they just know that things often do not go right. They maintain their fragility by assigning the responsibility for all things that go wrong or upset them to other people or bad luck. But some people are aware that they are on the receiving end of exported fragility. It could be from a spouse, life partner, other relative or friend, and I am familiar with a number of people who are in this situation. They have consciously accepted that they will be the target of an occasional unpleasantness. While I still see this acceptance as unhealthy for both, and indicating often significant fragility for the receiver, at least the latter is making a deliberate and informed choice.  

So where are we? Some readers will recognize the connection of being fragile to the Eastern concept of attachment. Both reflect the need to have things exactly as we want them, a futile condition. It is clear that chronic or inappropriate situational fragility is very undesirable, as we are constantly emotionally unbalanced and upset, prohibiting attaining deep happiness. It is also clear that we all have some fragile aspects. Deny them and we (and others) pay a big price. Acknowledge them and try to develop equanimity, and all is open to us. The prescription is to think, feel, and act in ways that express deep-rooted anti-fragility. Easier said than done, by a long shot, but I’ll take a stab at it in the next post.

 

 

Anti-fragile

No, I did not make this word up. Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined it in his book of the same name (he is also the author of the excellent The Black Swan). He needed a word that would express a unique and very important aspect of how complex organic systems function, including us.  

Anti-fragile refers to a system or organism (including humans and their societies) that can grow or improve in response to certain kinds and levels of shocks or stressors. Such systems are not vulnerable to challenge, disruption, or uncertainty, at least up to certain points—they actually benefit from them. At the personal level---lifting weights judiciously is an example of how the body can absorb stressors and actually improve in response, or getting low or mediocre grades on a composition is a stressor that helps some students become better. At the organizational level---planes do on occasion crash, a significant stressor that fragilizes the plane and the passengers. But since the airline industry and FAA use the crash information to make plane travel safer, the overall system is anti-fragile. 

Redundancies are a way to ensure anti-fragility, at least to some degree. Economies that have many new business start-ups have considerable redundancy. While many of these will fail, they are fragile to the risk, the economy itself will be healthier as many are successful. It will be anti-fragile. As Taleb says, “Restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is anti-fragile for that very reason.” The start-up and loss of these small entities ensures the continued dynamism of the local or national economy. From the above example, planes have a number of redundant systems that help with anti-fragilizing. 

Fragility, on the other hand, is the condition of responding poorly to stressors---being vulnerable to and harmed by shocks, disorder or uncertainty, even if of a small order. It is a function in part of having few or no options when disruptions hit, or in having the wrong ones. Anti-fragility is rare, but fragility is quite common on both the personal level (later post) and larger societal level. 

For fragile systems to survive, they require that all goes according to a “plan,” formal or not. Most governmental programs, for good or ill, are predicated on the assumption that the effort will pan out as described if many conditions (those of the plan) are met. Since these programs are initiated as part of complex interactions, and are implemented in complex settings---other agencies, groups or individuals, including opponents---the chances that the plan will work as intended are remote. Complex conditions always produce unexpected, for the most part unpredictable, and often undesirable, consequences. Thus, these programs are fragile to the unpredictability of human systems complexity. 

The greater the fragility of a system, the easier it is to knock it off balance. Highly fragile systems are very sensitive to even tiny shocks, which throw them quickly and sometimes deeply into disarray, if not into disintegration. A firm whose sales and profits have declined, and which has past-due obligations, is far more fragile than one whose financial condition is better. A relatively small shock to the first, say a letter from a lawyer for one of its smallest customers, could precipitate many bad things, with bankruptcy being only one. 

The collapse of mining in Africa has seriously damaged the well-being of a growing middle class. As global mineral demand has declined, particularly from China, Nigeria, Angola and South Africa have been hit hard, but Zambia has experienced some of the worst outcomes, with much higher unemployment, sharply increased inflation, a currency worth half its value, and higher suicide rates. Since each miner’s salary supports 15 dependents, loss of a job has a devastating impact. The nation and those workers, families, and companies dependent on the mineral industry are fragile to the decline in demand. Those at the top politically or otherwise  are anti-fragile to the demand change by virtue of the money and power they have acquired, legitimately or not. 

From our recent credit bubble of 9 years ago comes a similar story. All states were hit by the recession, but two states took particularly huge hits---Arizona and Florida, mainly because their growth and success depended primarily on the housing market, which tanked big time. Once again, high dependence on one sector means fragility when the shock arrives, and it always does, eventually. As is the case with all complex systems, when a shock will arrive and its magnitude are completely unpredictable. This construction disruption, like the African examples, led to significant unemployment and difficulties for workers and families, not to mention state revenues. 

California’s current tax structure depends greatly on the wealthy and super wealthy---around 50% of its budget comes from sources like income taxes and capital gains taxes from the top 10% of the population. When times are good, California reaps the reward and when they are bad, it pays a significant price. Its revenues are thus subject to roller-coaster-like trends, and during low points funding of many of the state’s programs is jeopardized. The state is thus fragile to its own tax structure and to the ups and downs of the state and national economies. Naturally, when revenues decline, cuts have to be made even in programs that are of great benefit, with the state’s fragility exported to those most needing those programs, and often to the average taxpayer.

The US and the EU currently have economic sanctions against Russia. Nonetheless, the people at the top in Russia are getting richer and richer while the average Russian is suffering from cuts in health care, interest rates not far from 20%, the flight of capital leading to higher unemployment, and from higher inflation generally. Anti-fragility at one level, encompassing very few people and companies, and fragility at another, involving great numbers of people. 

It is not just economies that are subject to fragility. Politics is as well. Two of those running for president, Sanders and Trump, are one-trick ponies. For Sanders, his pitch is that nearly everything is the fault of Wall Street, and more taxes on it will solve the nation’s troubles, especially if we give away all kinds of things for free. For Trump, he is selling himself as the end of all America’s problems. Neither Trump nor Sanders has much knowledge beyond his very (one might say astonishingly) limited domain, indicating fragility because national and international shocks (things not going as planned---practically guaranteed) will seriously upset either’s tiny apple cart, leading to poor, if not disastrous, errors in response---fragility. But their fragility would also be exported to the American public, who will pay the eventual price for mistakes resulting from either one’s singular and simplistic view of the world. 

These examples only hint at the expansiveness of the anti-fragile/fragile concept. Fragility and anti-fragility are evident in all human activities and processes. The examples also inform us about the complexity of the anti-fragile/fragile relationship. It is seldom that a system or entity is either anti-fragile or fragile. It can often be a mixture of both. Even with the Russian sanctions, because Putin has stopped importing much Western foodstuffs, this has meant a great boost to the local farming communities, which are thus anti-fragile to the sanctions. In our immune systems individual cells will die---fragility---in order for the system itself to grow stronger---anti-fragility. Our bodies, like many systems, thus have characteristics of both fragility and anti-fragility. In addition, comparisons indicate differences in degrees of fragility/anti-fragility. Although affected adversely by the decline in mineral demand, South Africa’s economy is more diverse than Zambia’s and is thus somewhat less fragile than the latter. 

What can we learn from understanding fragility and anti-fragility? One big thing for sure---that anti-fragility is a more desirable state than fragility. Expecting things to go as we want is a prescription for fragility. This is as true for individuals and families as it is for nations, governments, economies, religions, stock markets, and businesses. If anti-fragility is a desired state, what can we do to create more of it, at least for ourselves if not for larger entities? That will be the subject for the next post.