Support Structure

The original Marshmallow experiment looked at whether you could predict future success based on the ability to wait for a sugary treat. The skill of delayed gratification. More recently, a study controlled for socio-economic factors like parent’s education and early childhood development support. Once that was taken into account, waiting for the marshmallow had almost no predictive power about future success in school or life. Waiting is a core part of wealth creation. I do believe it is something you can learn. Something you can build into your habits. Spending has rhythm. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. You can pay attention to the things you consume regularly. You can pay attention to unsurprising surprises you can plan for, so they don’t regularly force you to start from scratch. Then, if you have fundamental faith in the future, and your place in it... you can allow the space and time for reinvestment. Where wealth isn’t what you consume or display. Wealth is the systemic structure that supports creativity.

Gothic Quadripartite Cross-Ribbed Vaults

 

Mont-Aux-Sources

Unlearning is so hard because most of the things we are really good at soak to the bone. They become as natural as breathing or walking. When impassioned, the words that spring from us come out fully formed as if by magic. Magic that crosses generations when words get planted in us in years we don’t even recall. Because we hadn’t built the palace of relevance in which to store things we care about. The information that controls most of our decision making is internalised. Embodied. We don’t have to think about it. When challenged, we add our intentions or justifications after the event. No one wants to be the bad guy, so the default voices in our heads are the PR officer and the Defence Attorney, “I am not a bad person, my intentions were good. The unintended consequences are not my responsibility. It is not my fault. I am not to blame.” Guilt and blame are an obstacle to learning. Without learning, there is no endurance, resilience, or creativity. Without learning, there is only repetition.

Source of the Tugela River

Heads or Tails

You can’t tell if a coin is biased with one spin. A coin biased to Heads can still fall on Tails. That is pretty compelling evidence that the coin is not anti-Tails. Even though it is. Spin a biased coin 7.8 Billion times and you will be able to tell very clearly that it is biased. 60 million times. Still clear. As the group gets bigger the compelling evidence in the defence of the coin will get weaker. The same is true of racism. An individual can try being “colour blind” and letting people “put the past behind them”, in order to treat people equally *from this point forward* “based on merit”. The first problem is treating people equally, who haven’t been treated equally, isn’t treating people equally. The second problem is we only see the strengths we are looking for. The words we don’t understand are just noise. The experiences we haven’t had don’t stretch us if they don’t connect, in some way, to the experience we have had. “I don’t see colour” is a form of racism. Racism with a compelling defence. Spin the coin a few more times and perhaps you’ll see the problem.

Which is Heads, and which is Tails?

Self-Made

“Self-Made” implies unplugging from the Matrix. Choosing the red pill. I believe Free Will is possible, it is just incredibly hard. Even then, the self of independent decisions exists within the system. Yogis call the Matrix “Maya” (the illusion of the reality of sensory experience and of the experienced qualities and attributes of oneself). Even if you see the Matrix, you have to start through acceptance. Changing things from where they are. Wealth Compounds. Real wealth comes when the story is bigger than you. When you become a smaller and smaller part of the picture. Through supply chains. Customers. Stakeholders. Through institution building. Articulating and voicing asks and offers. Solving other people’s problems. Through empowering others to make decisions you aren’t even aware of, or don’t have the capacity to understand. Taking the red pill is realising that it is not all about you. That wealth creation is about coordination and releasing potential. Self-Made is an illusion.

Complex Web

What you see is not all there is. Even if you know more than the average bear. No one understands. No one can. We live in a complex web of relationships, where every action has knock-on effects and unintended consequences. In a pass-the-parcel economy where we live hand-to-mouth, there is reduced capacity to pause. The strength of a business to survive isn’t evident in the size of their offices, and the image of success presented by their sales staff. You have to look at the Balance Sheet. The Cash Reserves. The Cash Flows. The Pipeline of Sales. The endurance and resilience of their suppliers, customers, competitors, and regulators. The laws can change. The technology can change. The people involved can change. Sustainable Creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It starts by shifting from a consumer mindset to a custodial one. How do you maintain awareness of a complex environment? Gentle trial and error with fire breaks and retreats for when you misstep. A balance of conserving what you love and chipping away at obstacles that aren’t completely understood.

Natural Life

"Science progresses one funeral at a time" Max Planck. Two of the reason I believe human intelligence is growing is that we don't know what others do, and we die. 

With most systems, there is the Legacy Tradeoff. They get progressively more complicated, and have an attached switching cost. The system works, with problems, and starting again is an absolute mission. There are known issues, but you live with them because nothing you can replace it with is any better.

Most historical figures look awful by our measures. Stalin and Churchill defeated Hitler! Yay! Stalin and Churchill were responsible for millions of deaths! Boo! Rhodes Scholarships! Yay! Cecil Rhodes the Racist Imperialist! Boo! Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund! Yay! Built off Oil! Boo! Nothing is as clear as we would like it to be. Evil people love their kittens and kids too.

Like when well-meaning older generations say cringe-worthy things, that used to be "completely acceptable". It is very hard to unlearn scripts and behaviours. We are also supposed to look up to the elders, but the world is changing so fast that there are no longer people who have experienced many of the challenges we are facing. Unlearning is a far more powerful tool than learning. We learn like sponges. Unlearning takes effort.

The advantage of the "we don't know what others do" means we can try lots of different approaches. A single person's life is pretty small. In the context of others, in the context of time, and the context of impact. Life cycles and generations help us get a balance between passing on the good bits in an ordered fashion, and letting the #Awkward moments fade.

Countries, Businesses, Religions, and various other institutions could likely also benefit from a degree of this "Natural Life". A balance between Conservation and Creative Destruction. Those of us with the bold new ideas, should also have the humility to realise our grandchildren are likely to cringe too.

Time moves on