Is a “Black Swan” Event Lurking Unseen Over the Horizon? Will it Result in a Paradigm Shift in Your Thinking? by Scipio

First, let me define two terms in the title. The term, “Black Swan Event” refers to an event no one saw coming or were able to prepare for.  It is an extreme outlier. The term was popularized by Nassium Nicholas Taleb in his book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”.

Prior to the discovery of black swans in Australia around 1700, the whole world: Eurasia, North Africa, and the Americas “just knew” that ALL swans were white. The term is usually used in economics, but I am using it here to represent any unforeseen change.  Black Swan events differ from the technological term “singularity” because singularity is theoretical, black swan is real world experience.

The term, “paradigm shift in thinking” is best described in a true story told to me by a former business acquaintance I worked with.  He told me he was waiting in an airport terminal for his flight when it was announced his flight would be delayed.

He decided to buy a bag of cookies to munch on while he waited and also later on the plane.  Purchasing the cookies, he came back to his seat and placed the bag of cookies on the dividing section between himself and a lady seated next to him. Within seconds, the woman reached in the bag, took out a cookie, and started eating it.  He couldn’t believe what just happened! He reached in the bag, took out a cookie, and began eating it when the woman again reached in the bag pulled out another cookie, smiled at him, and ate it. The nerve he thought! There some real nut jobs out there, and I am sitting beside one!

Soon the plane started boarding.  He got his brief case, grabbed the bag of cookies, and paused just long enough to make eye contact with the woman and give her a mean look.  She smiled back at him.  He was beside himself with anger as he stomped off to the plane.

He settled in his first-class seat and as the coach passengers filed by, he saw the woman and glared at her all the way down the aisle.  She smiled back her biggest smile yet. My friend was beside himself. Surely this woman was a psycho.  He put the remaining cookies in the storage area on the back of the seat to his front.  When the flight reached cruising altitude, he opened his brief case to do a little work.  When he opened it up, he immediately saw a bag of cookies in it. Disoriented, he looked at the bag of cookies on the seat in front of him.  Then he looked down at the bag of cookies in his brief case.  That’s when he remembered putting them there at the counter where he bought the cookies and then forgot about it.  He had been eating the woman’s cookies! That’s when he told me he had a paradigm shift in his thinking.

What future event(s) are you planning for: a modified Red Dawn scenario, a modified Walking Dead scenario, a Brave New World or 1984 type of dystopia?  What if none of them happen?  What if something happens that is terrifying and you are not prepared for?  What do you do?

Here is where the best survival tool you have, your brain, must be fully utilized.  It’s said the decisions you make in the first hour of a survival situation determines greatly your chances of survival.  There are numerous instances where people who were expert rock climbers, swimmers, outdoorsmen, etc. perished because they were over confident in their abilities or failed to recognize the situation they faced was different.  In 2008 eleven mountain climbers died climbing K2. They were experienced climbers and were following standard procedures that had been followed for years, but this time it was different. It was in fact a type of Black Swan event.

Don’t be like the two mice, Hem and Haw who lived in a maze and found their cheese every morning in the same location.  The story is found in psychiatrist Dr. Spencer Johnson’s, “Who Moved My Cheese?”.  One day Hem and Haw found the cheese was not there as it had always been before.  They waited for it to reappear, then went home and come back the next day.  But the next day was the same, no cheese.  They begin asking each other was there a supply chain problem, then they blamed it on the millennials, then they blamed it on each other, and in despair they threw up their hands and gave up.  One day, Hem said he was going to find some new cheese, but Haw said he would get lost in the maze.  Haw’s hunger forced him to make a decision to go.  He almost perished on the way, got lost and back tracked often, grew tired, but eventually found some new cheese.  Meanwhile, Haw presumedly died because he couldn’t get beyond his expectations, and he experienced no paradigm shift in his thinking.

I hope what you have planned for works for you.  Congratulations on what you have done, and to some extent to be doing what you are doing represents a degree of paradigm shift in thinking.  Most of our fellow citizens are unfortunately not there yet, they need our help. But if the big Black Swan event comes, use your brain.