Disciples of Jesus are Antifragile

In my reading of Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder,^[1]by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I found myself reflecting of Christ’s call to individuals to follow him. Those invitations were huge steps into the unknown. Steps out of stability and comfort into a lifestyle of risk, and process of transformative, or refined resilience. I cannot help but wonder how often, we as church leaders actually invite people into a life of all in risk taking with Jesus? Or has our “need to something”^[2] resulted in “naïve intervention” weakening the spiritual substance of those we are called to serve?^[3]

The disciples of Jesus were invited to a life of growing in antifragility. It was an invitation into a life that is totally reliant on one’s Creator (Luke 5:1-11). This was a life of adventure, randomness, volatility and insecurity in the tangible world (Luke 9:57-59). Yet somehow the risks and loss, produced a resilience of character that was sustained through faith, and an inner peace beyond comprehension (Luke 10:4). Those who embarked on this journey experience great joy and empowerment, as well as great loss, and pain (Luke 10:17, Hebrews 11:35-38). What makes this an adventure and not just some spiritual masochistic endeavor? Could the answer and strength be found in the relationship with the master? In the daily interchange of thought, daily life, and watching him navigate the random disruption with a surety and peace the disciples had not encountered? Could this possibly the value Taleb found in the “apprenticeship models” of the Swiss education system?[4]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s vast background in mathematics, probability, and philosophy is reflected in his writing in Antifragile. This comes through is numerous references to mythological gods and events. He has a statical approach to the nature of randomness and volatility. The overarching theme in the book is that all things, including people, benefit from “shock” and “volatile environments, because as they’re stressed and put under pressure, they get better.”[5] Taleb uses a growth mindset[6] approach to explain how a fragile being analyses the “indicators of success and failure”[7] to overcompensate, “by building extra capacity to handle even bigger shocks better.”[8]

This comprehensive book systematically explains every aspect of life in terms of how those people or aspects of society engage in facilitating strategic randomness and volatility. His knowledge and expertise are evident in his “important warnings and insights.”[9] Personally, I found this book difficult to get through. I am not sure if the content is similar to other books this semester or that my non-mathematical background struggling to connect with his logic.

That being said, I do find myself being challenged to reevaluate my leadership in terms of stealing the struggle from those I serve. There is definitely great value in exploring more of a mentor model within the church that is active and interactive while allowing for lessons through both failure and success.

 

 

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[1] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, Random House Trade Paperback edition (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014).

[2] Ibid., 110.

[3] Ibid., 111.

[4] Ibid., 91.

[5] Niklas Goeke, “Antifragile by Nasssim Taleb Summary and Review,” Four Minute Books, March 6, 2016.

[6] Carol Dweck, “The Growth Mindset,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-71zdXCMU6A.

[7] Goeke, “Antifragile by Nasssim Taleb Summary and Review.”

[8] Ibid.

[9] Julian Baggini, “Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand - Review,” The Guardian, December 15, 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/21/antifragile-how-to-live-nassim-nicholas-taleb-review.

Tacit Knowledge: The Individual’s Discovery of Eternal Purpose

 Most of you know that I have been working on a doctorate. A part of the work I am doing requires me to write a blog post every week on a leadership book we have read. So, to better include you on my journey I decided to start posting them here as well. Below is this week's post.

I moved into my place in Sequim nearly a year ago, and with moving comes the seemingly endless unpacking. For me, every box was an adventure of new or a rediscovery of a different life. Some boxes revealed my life before I had a passport, while others were filled with treasures from previous generations. One of the most revealing discoveries I found was in the numerous boxes of old documents. You know the ones, those that you have to keep until the appointed time when they can be shredded. There among the decades of papers doomed for destruction I found notes, old journals, and random thoughts that echoed the themes running through my NPO. At that moment I had no words to explain the connections.[1]  Could this be an example of my own scientific tacit knowledge discovery journey? [2] Have the professional and ministerial decisions been a “compelling…sequence of choices” meant to “transform”[3] me into the person who can reveal the truths hidden within my NPO?[4] Could it be that all the pressure, struggle, perseverance required in this program was the crucible[5] used to produce the actualization necessary for me to find the words to my own tacit knowledge?[6]

The Tacit Dimension[7] by Michael Polanyi, the younger brother of Karl Polanyi and the author of The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. [8] The Austrian Hungarian Jewish brothers inherited their mother’s curiosity, debate, and interest in political issues that influence the culture.[9] Although, their father died while Karl and Michael were in their teens, they both impacted by his “stalwart moral integrity.”[10] Michael’s perceptive developed out of his experience as a physician,[11] and as an esteemed physical chemist.[12] Michael published The Tacit Dimension[13] as “a response to Soviet instrumentalization of science,”[14] he had observed during his 1935 visit to Moscow. Michael believed this to be a compromise of free scientific thought and ultimately the destruction of any new discoveries.[15] Michael’s support of free thought posed to be the philosophical divide with Karl’s appreciation of socialisms economic constructs.[16] This divide created the space for the brothers to develop their own differentiated philosophical view.[17] I cannot help but wonder if this contributed to the brother’s ability provide us with the opposing views necessary to see more clearly? It is as if, each one’s scientific pursuit of their own tacit “hidden reality” reveal for us “future discoveries.”[18]

In The Tacit Dimension, Polanyi examines the social, scientific, economic, and philosophic thought into how people know more than they are able to express while having a need to uncover hidden truths. The book comprises lectures, within the three chapters of the book, take a systematic approach through varies social scientific examples. Polanyi, emphasizes the need for freedom of thought to create the environment for creative and new discoveries.[19] These new discoveries in science and elsewhere are to undergo peer review, free from government of interference.[20]

My reflection on this book leaves me with this spiritual thought: God created each person with the seeds necessary to address specific issues. Those seeds are at the very core of a person’s being, tacit knowledge. That individual is driven by “a need” for “a purpose which bears…eternity.”[21]

            “…He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the

            whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11[22]

 

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[1] Michael Polanyi and Amartya Sen, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 4.

[2] Ibid., 79.

[3] Ibid., 80.

[4] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.

[5] Tod E. Bolsinger, Tempered Resilience: How Leaders Are Formed in the Crucible of Change (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2020).

[6] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 89.

[7] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.

[8] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, 2nd Beacon Paperback ed (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).

[9] Walter Gulick, “Michael and Karl Polanyi: Conflict and Convergence,” Political Science Reviewer 37 (2008): 14.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 17.

[12] Helicon, “Polanyi, Michael (1891-1976),” in The Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography, n.d., https://search-credoreference-com.georgefox.idm.oclc.org/content/entry/hdsb/polanyi_michael_1891_1976/0.

[13] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension.

[14] Park Doing, “Review: The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi and Tacit and Explicit Knowledge by Harry Collins,” Social Studies of Science 41, no. 2 (April 2011): 301, https:// www.jstor.org/stable/41301906.

[15] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 3.

[16] Gulick, “Michael and Karl Polanyi: Conflict and Convergence,” 21.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Polanyi and Sen, The Tacit Dimension, 82.

[19] Ibid., 77.

[20] Ibid., 83.

[21] Ibid., 92.

[22] Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible: New Living Translation. (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), 539.