Just Because it is Green

Pure equality would restrict us. Like the monoculture of a Palm Oil Plantation versus the rich biodiversity of a Rain Forest. One may be green, but the life disappears. Daniel Dennett’s book “Darwin's Dangerous Idea” reframed the concept of evolution in a way that I had not understood before. I always had the sense that it was important to have some driving sense of progress. We want some knowledge of how things are going to play out. That is why we love this idea of cause and effect. Then we can control what is going to happen. Letting go of that control is very difficult. That is Darwin's dangerous idea. It talks about the Red Queen, in Alice in Wonderland. Where she has to run as fast as she can just to stay in the same place. We have to step back and start looking at our idea of progress.

A Palm Oil Plantation in Malaysia

Natural Stock Keeping

Investing is unavoidably philosophical. It is challenging to build up evidence when there is so much noise. A choice between too short for the noise to wash out, and so long that the evidence is stale. A single decision, whether right or wrong, large or small, is almost irrelevant in the very long run. It is the process that matters. “Time in the market, rather than timing the market”. An individual career (15-40 years) barely lets proper compounding kick in. Real wealth is created across generations, within communities, through institution building. My philosophy has shifted towards that of my father-in-law’s approach to Natural Bee Keeping, and a friend working on re-Wilding in farming. Focusing on Endurance and Resilience. Letting the Bees, Nature and Businesses do the work. A single decision that ends things does matter, so the focus needs to be on Custodianship. Keep breathing. Keep moving. Keep creating. Sustainable Growth is the pumping heart that keeps the cycle of creation and reinvestment going.

Red Queen

“Survival of the Fittest” suggests a level of knowledge in advance. This is hindsight bias. Normally there is a base level of fitness, and then it is just those who have the specific survival skill required for the randomly selected sorting event. The world is complex, ambiguous, and random. We can work on our base fitness. We can be prepared for a variety of sorting events. If something happens that 95% wipes you out, you want to be in a position to rebuild from that 5%. “The Red Queen” principle in Biology is that evolution is more about running just to stay in the same place, “organisms must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing organisms in a constantly changing environment.”

The Fittest

Survival of the fittest suggests a level of knowledge in advance. In reality, we tend to have a survival bias. Those that make it through fit stories to explain why they were the winners. If history had played out differently, the alternative story would have fit equally snuggly. We are chronic pattern seekers and can add a layer of meaning onto any random jumble of stars. Advance “Fitness” is more about developing resilience. The ability to sustain knocks in a variety of situations. Ensuring everything you do has an underlying quality, but accepting that the noise of life will have the loudest voice. Resilience helps you be part of the editing committee as your story is written.

Orion

Perma-Resilience

I have always been an underlying optimist. A Perma-Bull. I grew up religious, and as the world threw difficult 'then how come this' questions at me, I still loved the idea of an underlying 'bias to good'. A belief in progress. A belief in survival. I believe less in cause and effect than I ever have. I think stories that explain things are added after the fact to give us comfort. What happened is just one version of what could have happened. The world is complex, ambiguous and uncertain. What I do still believe in is our capacity to cope. I believe in our resilience. I believe in compounding resilience. The more hardship you have faced, provided you don't break, the more you will be able to deal with in the future. Believing what you do is only one small contributor to what happens doesn't mean it doesn't matter. What you do is the only thing that matters. The important thing is making sure what you do creates connections. Links in the story. Resilience.

A view back to earth

5% Okay

Daniel Dennett's book 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea' changed my understanding of evolution. I had heard the idea in 'The Red Queen', but it hadn't sunk in. Survival of the Fittest can suggest we know in advance who the fittest is. That isn't how it works. A lot of random stuff happens. With sufficient diversity, something can survive even if almost everything doesn't. If 5% survives *and can rebuild*, then we can cope with some pretty big knocks. The Red Queen in Wonderland says, 'it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place'. The important thing isn't the destination, or even knowing what is going to happen. Too much is uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. We can't know. The important thing is the running. The being. The ability to cope. Always be at least 5% okay.

Mistakes

You can't plan for everything

The engine of evolution isn't foresight, or prediction. It's mistakes. Imperfect copies are an intrinsic acknowledgement of ignorance of what lies ahead. Rather than grand visions driving progress, mistakes enable adaptability to whatever lies ahead. Don't be afraid of mistakes. The world is complex, ambiguous and uncertain, but we have to act anyway. Being wrong is worth celebrating IF it means you learn. Huge external shocks, like asteroids, or the arrival of colonists from far off lands, bearing gifts of guns, germs and steel can wipe out 95% of a population. The 5% that survive can rebuild, if they keep up their mojo. If they don't get so scared they stop living. Get up. Dust off. Crack on.

Mistakes, Repetition and Resilience

The driving force behind evolution is mistakes and repetition. Almost perfect copies again and again, with room to breathe and room to expand. When something, when anything, goes horribly wrong and there is sufficient variation... there will be survivors. The number one rule is to survive. That doesn't mean knowing what will happen. It means knowing something will happen. Plans only help for the things you understand, resilience helps for the things you don't. With humans came consciousness. With communication came shared consciousness. We can now make plans and try bend the world to our will, but we should keep that humility. The humility that comes with knowing that we don't know.

Choosing Now

Some time ago, I read Jared Diamond's explanation of how geography and biogeography, rather than race, led to human history playing out so differently around the world. The thesis is what it says on the tin. 'Guns, Germs & Steel' gave various civilisations a significant advantage at different times. The way we see the world simplifies things somewhat.

I saw South Africa's history as being different from America and Australia because Africa is very much part of the old world. I had heard about Germs doing significant damage in wiping out large chunks of humanity as explorers started sailing into foreign ports after months of being sick at sea. It was in Martin Meredith's 'The Fortunes of Africa' that I learnt how similar the history of the Dutch Cape Colony had been. Originally a trading post, disease had also jumped ship and wiped out chunks of the local Khoi and San people. The original settlements were small and they also got hammered. Setting out for foreign lands was often a last trip with many of the 'colonists' effectively being exiled criminals or poor people.

It wasn't just the Americas, Australasia and Africa either. Disease used to smash all of us. The Black Death killed an estimated 30-60% of the European population 1346-1353. About 75-200 million people. This ranged from about 20% in England to about 80% in Italy. That is the sort of thing that doesn't get forgotten. It must be a frightening World War like experience to have so many people you love get torn from you. I have never had to fight in a War. Most of the people I have lost have been old when they left.

The Black Death

  

Life is still fragile, but I struggle to imagine how it must have been to have lived in the not to distant past. Global Child Mortality fell from 18.2% in 1960 to 4.3% in 2015 (Our World in Data). Losing a child before they reach their 5th birthday is one of the most tragic things I can imagine. It used to be common place. Every hundredth birth used to result in the death of the mother. That too breaks people, but used to be common. All incredibly harsh experiences that we are conquering.

In 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea', Dennett explains how rather than evolution being 'survival of the strongest', it is more about resilience. We don't know in advance what life is going to throw at us. We just know it is going to throw a lot. Evolution happened through making lots of slightly imperfect copies. All with different imperfections. Mostly the same. Evolution isn't about grand plans of progress, it is about building resilience.

When a new challenge comes out of nowhere, sometimes most of us got wiped out. If 95% of a population fell to a disease, a different 5% may have survived had it been a different disease. No one group can withstand everything.

If history was played again a thousand times, we would have had a thousand different outcomes with different winners and different losers. I am just glad to live in a time where we are working towards the lottery mattering a little less. Where we are smashing poverty, decreasing violence, and getting healthier.

If I had the choice of when to live, I would choose now.

One Day or One Day

The second default question after 'what do you do?' we often get asked is 'what is the long term plan' or 5 year goal. Having a long term plan allows you to chip away at it each day. It gives you direction. But it also presumes we have a lot more control over where we end up than we do. It is true that we can tweak plans as we go, and the process of planning may be more important than the specifics.

As I have spent my time thinking about happiness and learning, I have started reigning back 'big picture' thinking. I have tried to focus on what I am doing each day and what little, achievable one day goals I can make. On who I can spend that day with. On what I can spend that day thinking about. One of the most successful colleagues I have had started her day by finishing three small things. Small things add up.

Who I Can Spend Time With

More importantly than that, I am okay with where I am. Long term goals can have you living far in the future. I am really enjoying writing this blog, the reading I get to do, and the people I get to spend time with. My five year plan is to still be enjoying each day as much as I am now. To try sustain my ability to  savour life. To chew.

One thing you realise when you look at wealthy countries like America, Britain, Australia, Canada etc. is that problems don't disappear. Ever. They may get less raw than living in worn-torn, hunger-rife, disease-infested, uneducated, failed states, but they still have problems. We will always have issues. You still get homeless people in countries that can afford to feed and house everyone. Many issues are social or mental and can't be solved with a wad of cash. Productive people still have obstacles to goals they want to achieve. Happy people still have relationships they are struggling over. Random trauma still happens. Life is still fragile.

Accepting that there have always been problems, and there always will be problems is perhaps one way of actually doing more. 'The world is fine' is an uncomfortable notion when there is poverty, death, pain, and trauma. I always found more comfort in the idea that 'the trajectory is right' or the plan is right even if now is not okay. I liked the idea of evolution as a force for good. We slowly do things better. Daniel Dennett suggests evolution is more about sustainability or adjustment. There is no underlying driving force other than things getting repeated, almost the same way. The small 'mistakes' add the ability to adjust, adapt, accommodate. Nassim Taleb would call it antifragility. A comfort with, or ability to deal positively with stress.

It is great when we solve problems, but they will be replaced with other problems. I don't think this means we should stop trying to solve problems. The thought has just shifted my focus. People are best positioned to solve their own problems. We just need to support each other in doing that.

Not in five years. Today.

Identities and Interdependence

We think of new things in ways we already understand. Imagine a horses body with a man's torso. If you were a bat, how would it feel to 'see' with your ears? If you were poor, how would you get yourself out of the situation? It is very hard to strip away how we already see when we look at the world. Quite often we understand the way our world is, and we can visualise the way we want the world to be. We can't quite see how we would get from here to there though. We want to moan about the way things are. But we are scared to change. We don't want to lose what we have. But we want something else.

Daniel Dennett talks about the confusing idea of taking two species and selecting just two bits and asking wouldn't it be better if this had that. A horse with wings. A cat that talked. A elephant with stripes. Things that are possible in isolation may not be possible together. They each came about through millions of small little tweaks that led them to a specific combination. Each characteristic is part of a larger orchestra. It doesn't exist in isolation. You may not be able to get from here to there.

We like to separate things into small chunks. To identify things. To create boundaries. Frameworks. Boxes. Rules. These boundaries are completely artificial and a tool we use to think. To create stories we think we understand. A queen bee, for example, is not distinct from the hive. The worker bee is not distinct from the hive. The hive is a single organism. Extend that further and we are not distinct from bees. No bees. No people.

Computers do amazing things by combining very simple 'dumb' things. Strings of 1s and 0s create decision paths that lead to 'intelligence'. A sensor may just be able to tell if it is light (1) or dark (0), but combined with many, many other small decisions it may be able to drive a car. So once a large, complicated organism grows and sees something else, we are very unsure about what to tweak.

Which is why creative destruction becomes so important. Quite often the change comes from people who are starting from scratch. Once you become very attached to the way you do things, you need to be able to plan a way to transition from here to there. Often that requires a completely different way of looking at things. There is no path sideways. You have to step back. There is no elephant with ears that work as wings. There is an elephant. There is a bird.

Sorry, no Dumbo Dumbo.

This is why change often happens without permission. While people are discussing the path or gaining consensus, someone else gets it done. Change also doesn't happen in an orderly fashion. There is no straight, predictable path of progress. Sometimes things bubble along frustratingly with no progress. Sometimes they go backwards. Then a better way emerges. Some changes uproot everything. Our world was designed around horses. Then the car came along. Now our world is designed around cars. They are everywhere. Maybe they will disappear too as they learn to drive themselves and we don't need so many. Maybe to go forward, we have to go back to walking.

Cars that drive themselves may have dramatic knock on effects. Everything is connected in ways we don't fully understand. If cars drive themselves, do we all need to arrive at work at the same time? Can we live outside the city? Do kids need to go to the same schools to save Mum & Dad driving time?  Do businesses need to have fixed locations? What else can 'drive itself'? What jobs become redundant. How does that change our world?

The world is incredibly complicated and interconnected. The wonder of human creativity is the ability to connect dots. To make wild, illogical, passionate leaps. To ask questions. Then to figure out the balance between conserving the things we love, accepting that things are bound to change, and putting aside the way we see the world to see both how it is and how it could be. A balance between questioning and practising. 

Exciting, nerve-wracking and without boundaries or identities.