Stability: a child of modernity?

When I was really small, I asked my mom “why don’t we put a huge nail to the pacific plate to prevent earthquakes from happening?”

My mom answered, “even if we can, it brings about worse disaster because accumulated energy will be released some day.”

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Mr. Stuart Rutherford, one of the pioneers of microfinance research, told me an interesting story which made him interested in microfinance.

He used to be an architect. When he visited Nicaragua after Managua earthquake in 1972 for the reconstruction project under USAID program, he realized that the poor was actually benefiting from the disaster by collecting debris and utilizing it to rebuild their simple houses. They were able to upgrade their houses by abundance of construction materials around. On the other hand, the rich was completely at a loss, loosing their gorgeous homes.

This is how he became interested in how the poor is managing their money and wrote a ground breaking book, “Portfolios of the poor. How the world’s poor live on 2$ a day”: http://www.portfoliosofthepoor.com/authors.asp

He revealed that the poor is better at managing money than us since they are always dealing with uncertain financial situations.

They know how to survive, or rather, how to benefit from this uncertain world.

In a modern world, it seems like people think that stability is a good thing without doubt. It is a tacit understanding widely shared among us.

Pension system is there to enable STABLE life after the retirement, the mission of central banks is to realize the price STABILITY, we are happy when we obtain a STABLE employment, we think we are happy when we maintain a STABLE mental state, etc etc.

But how come?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb criticizes this mentality in “Anti-fragile”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile

Having been a stock trader and since traders make money from price volatility, he argues that we need to create a society that can benefit from disorder.

If the world is fundamentally uncertain, we need to learn how to enjoy instability.

Maybe modernity ingrained the notion of “stability as a good per se” too much among us, humans.

References

Collins, D. (2009). Portfolios of the poor: How the world’s poor live on $2 a day. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. New York: Random House.