Antifragility

We don’t want things to go wrong or break. That is sensible- when things go wrong it makes life worse. But our desire to stop bad things happening can lead to us unintentionally making the situation worse.

So take the toddler, who is always falling off things, running into things, getting bruised. The parent worries the child will break a bone or get a cut. So they stop the toddler running around. They give the child a screen. The house and all play spaces have every hard corner padded, every height removed or blocked. Now the child can’t break a bone.

Except… the child is now not active but inactive, which leads to worse health outcomes long term. The child’s online world has its own risks to mental health. The child is not learning how to handle risk in the real world, and so when they go to school they are more likely to trip or crash in the playground. And bones that are not tested don’t grow stronger but weaker.

Bones are antifragile- regular strains and impacts actually help bones to grow stronger. The minor damage done regularly by jumping and running and other impactful activity triggers bone density and structures that keep bones strong. Lack of impacts leads to bones that are weaker and more vulnerable to fracture.

So bones are a good example of antifragility. I came across this concept in the work of Nicolas Taleb, who is probably best known for the Black Swan concept. But this antifragility concept resonated with me. For fragile things, we keep them from breaking by keeping them from impacts. A wineglass is fragile and so is carefully packed away. But for antifragile things, we keep them from breaking by constant small impacts. We do our best preparation for long term resilience by exposing to short term challenges.

That has shaped my parenting. The world my children will enter as adults will be a tough world in all sorts of ways. So while not exposing them to everything right now, I want to be exposing them to increasing challenges so they are antifragile rather than fragile when they go into adult life. I aim to give them space to take risks of minor injuries to learn how to handle themselves in the physical world. I want them to have space to sort out social dynamics as children without adults constantly policing it.

It also shapes my approach to handling issues where the Bible is offensive to modern cultural sensibilities. Some pastors fear to mention them, aware that not everyone in the congregation will be happy with the Bible’s teaching, and even more aware that the institutions around us won’t like it. The congregation is treated as fragile, to be protected from Bible teaching that might cause personal upset or a people to leave the church. By contrast, I aim to touch on tricky issues regularly (but not every week!) in my preaching, so that people are regularly reminded what the Bible teaches. Not everyone likes it. But it is no surprise where the church stands, and those who stay are being prompted to bring their lives and emotions in line with the Bible rather than fit their faith to their feelings.

There will be a need for wisdom in determining when a person or system is genuinely fragile (and so needs careful protection) and when they are antifragile and would benefit from challenge. But overall, I’ve found the concept of antifragility very helpful, and particularly in explaining why “safetyism” doesn’t even produce the outcomes it aims for.