We want to know what is going to happen. We want to know how to prepare. We want to control outcomes and minimized disappointment. As a culture we have an addiction to prediction.
My Coming Christmas Money
One Christmas I asked all my relatives for money — cash money.
Then I started guessing how much money they might give me. And I would then thumb through the Lego catalogue to figure out which sets I wanted and how many I could buy.
Each day I recalculated my hoped for big haul. And each day I rechecked all that I could potentially buy.
But when Christmas came I realized I had drastically over-estimated how much I would get.
My predictions were all wrong.
And predictably, rather than being grateful and appreciative, I was disappointed, even angry.
The Polls and Prophecies Were Wrong
Like my 9 year old self, we as a culture have an ADDICTION TO PREDICTION.
We look to polls to predict who is going to be president.
And they are wrong.
We look to prophets to predict who is going to be president.
And they were wrong.
But instead of admitting that we have an addiction to prediction, we claim that the election is a fraud.
Predictions and Preparation
We, in the West, have an addiction to prediction because, like all of humanity, we hate uncertainties and we think information will cancel out all uncertainty.
But unlike the rest of the world, we in the West believe that technology, science, and reason can make the world totally understandable.
And if we can understand what is coming, then we can prepare for it.
Prediction leads to proper preparation.
That is the lie we believe.
Why Do We Childproof a House?
Nassim Nichlas Taleb, author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, asks why do we childproof a house.
We make a house safe for children exactly because it is impossible to predict where a child is going to go at all time. And it is impracticable to follow a child around and make sure they aren’t hurting themselves.
The more sane approach is to create a safer system (“childproof the house”) that isn’t dependent on prediction, but is able to withstand all the possibilities that might arise.
Taleb argues that the tragedy of the modern world is that we have all become “neurotically overprotective parents” who are addicted to predictions such that their helping is actually harming.
We need more childproofing in our lives and less predictions.
Robust System Don’t Need Predictions
Taleb argues in Antifragile that only fragile systems need forecasting. Fagile systems and people need to be aware of all things and all possibilities, and therefore are in a constant state of anxiety, confusions, and disappointment.
But Taleb says we need to abandon our addiction to prediction.
Instead we need to create robust systems that are antifragile – systems that grow stronger when under stress (like how we grow muscles and bone density).
We must realize again that the world is a vast, complex, and interconnected reality that is exceptionally hard to fully understand and predict.
Breaking Our Addiction to Prediction
Rather than making better predictions, what we really need are better practices that make us more robust and resilient to the randomness of life.
Practice #1: Get to know different kinds of people.
In our increasingly polarized world, we need to get out of our bubbles and realize how unique and different people are, that people don’t fit our expectations, and that people don’t all share our motivational systems (they don’t do what they do for the reasons we think they do).
Practice #2: Always be grateful for what is given.
We live in a high demand world of instant gratification. Our technology promises immediate results within predefined parameters. Practicing gratitude trains us away from that mentality and always rejoices what is received.
Practice: #3: Accept the unexpected.
Life is so much more random and unexpected that we like. But we can’t eliminate randomness, chaos, or the unwanted. Learn to accept (to roll with) a change of plans, an unmet expectation, or even a large disappointment.
GRASSROOTS CHRISTIANITY:
Growing faith for everyday people
Returning the prophetic to everyday people, giving them the tools to understand prayer, to have the critical thinking tools of faith, and to better understand the Bible is exactly why I’m working on launching a little side project called “Grassroots Christianity”.
It is for all those who want to take hard questions and honest doubts and use them as the fertilizer of faith.
Check out this little GRASSROOTS THEOLOGY MANIFESTO to learn all about it.