Don’t expect applause
In 2012, Nasim Nicholas Taleb published Antifragile: things that gain from disorder. He pointed out a simple truth that is obvious as soon as you see it, but remains hidden to many people because they have no word to describe it.
Basically, our culture classifies things as fragile or hardy; they either break easily or they don’t break (or change) at all. But living things display a quality that is the opposite of fragile. It’s not that they simply don’t break under stress; they actually thrive.
Think of muscles. When we stress them by lifting heavy weights, then allow them to recover, they grow stronger. Each time we do this, they adapt with a greater capacity to lift even heavier weights. Most living things are like this. But this idea is still literally unthinkable to most people because they don’t have the language to describe it. It’s not just that they can’t communicate the idea, they can’t comprehend or recognize it because they don’t have the mental framework to capture it.
Ideas, too, are living things. They are meant to be tested, stressed that they can grow stronger, which for ideas we label as “truer.” Taleb lays out a corollary that I call the Antifragile Truth Principle: things that prove true across time and culture are more true, more reliable.
Throughout time and culture, there is an impulse in we homo sapiens — we wise ones — to wonder “what is really real?” What’s it all about? What does it all mean? So, you could say that seeking what is really real is the same as seeking the Tao or Christ-nature or Brahman or Source or Self or the Great Spirit.
There is an alarming similarity in the answers that have been recorded over time and space. The problem is that the tao that can be named is not the true Tao. You cannot speak the name of G**. All of the wisdom of the ages is coded in poetry because the Truth is unspeakable. But that does not mean that we don’t know what’s true — or at least what’s more true and less true. Those of us seeking the truth can feel into it.
My partner and I have both been involved in a lifelong quest to discover what is really real. We do this by taking ideas and stressing them against reality to see if they break or if they grow stronger and truer — how do you put these teachings into practice right here, today, in this reality?
Here’s the catch: most people fear reality. As Gloria Steinem said “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Reality is a ‘trigger warning.’ The vast majority of humans prefer the comfortable lie over the inconvenient truth. We use the word “disillusion” as a synonym for “defeat.” How absurd that we think living in a state of delusion would be a good thing, yet “ignorance is bliss”.
And so those of us who seek what is really real face this handicap — people really don’t like us. We are inconvenient. We intrude on the beautiful fantasy they’ve created in the stories they tell themselves about the world. If I was King of the World, I would decree that henceforth the phrase “I believe…” would be replaced with the phrase “In the magical world where only I live…” What is belief against reality? But in this reality, that’s not a choice I get to make.
So, “don’t expect applause.” This is part of the wisdom tradition encoded in the Tibetan Buddhist lojong training developed over a 1000 years ago. Even then, before the Internet and Facebook, before 40-hour work weeks and mortgages, this much was true.
I guess I’m trying to send a message in a bottle to all of you out there who are seeking what is really real — all of us who reject the “comfortable lie” of any ideology or belief system that props up the ego’s idea of moral superiority.
I feel your pain.
I know how hard it is to sacrifice and strive and walk into those dark, scary places required to explore what’s really real only to be judged and condemned by those moralists who have all the easy answers. The vegans and the market capitalists. Those on the left and the right who think the only problem in the world is that you don’t think the same way they do. The hypocrites who hold forth on how you should run your life while blissfully unaware of their complicity. Those for whom what you should do is so clear and what they should do a black hole.
It sucks.
But we are antifragile, you and I. They are not.
Their desperation and anger and projection and judgment — eventually it will crumble. You and I, we know this because, let’s face it, we were there not that long ago. We tried as hard as we could to cling to that ignorance that promises bliss, but it never holds. It is fragile and in need of constant protection. Eventually, you get tired of defending the indefensible and the illusion shatters and what is left is what’s really real. There is a reason all the wisdom traditions stress surrender.
Often — usually — it’s hard to take much comfort it this, at least for me. But then I think of the sinew of my Nana. You could bend iron around her will. My ancestors were antifragile — the living version of tempered steel. I am made of that same stuff. And that which does not kill us makes us stronger.
So, if this message reaches you, send a message out to the rest of us. Let us all know that you get it, too. Maybe we can’t expect applause, but it’s nice to know that we aren’t alone. I get it.
