The Digested Twenty-first Century (27 page)

A week or so ago, I was bench-pressing 250kg in the luxury gym in the basement of my Manhattan condo, when I was interrupted by Nelson Mandela who wanted to know why I kept repeating the triadic dualistic mantra of fragile and antifragile. ‘Dats simpul,’ I replied, using the voice of Fat Tony from Brooklyn, a character I created who never fails to make me laugh out loud. Though he may not have the same effect on you. ‘Becoz I’ve nuttin more to say and 400 pages to say it.’

Let me put it another way. When I interrupted the World Economic Forum in Davos to expose the central fallacies of non-optionality in the markets, I was shouted down by everyone except Buddha. But it is now clear to me that I have been proved entirely right on absolutely everything except those things that I may
have got wrong. And that uncertainty over which is which goes to the very essence of the antifragile.

But where’s your evidence, you might tediously ask? If so, you wouldn’t be the first, as I had this out with Plato over a glass of the finest retsina to be found in the Peloponnese. As long as you stay stuck in the mindless pursuit of empirical cause and effect, you will be lost in the darkness. The key to enlightenment is the simple convex transformation that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I will say that again in case you missed it. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Recall that we once had no word for the colour blue. So we had no word for complete tosser. Until now. The apophatic should always take the via negativa and assume that every doctor is trying to kill you unless you happen to get better. ‘How then,’ Confucius asked me when I was staying in the Forbidden City, ‘am I supposed to be able to tell which changes are antifragile and which are not?’ Let go of your doxastic epistemes, grasshopper. The answers lie within.

Digested read, digested:
Antimatter.

In 1945, two brothers in Egypt found discarded biblical texts. In 1982, Paolo di Canio found a further manuscript in the same area. He gave it to me, Paulo di Coelho, last year. This is what it said
.

Today is July 14th, 1089, and the town of Jerusalem, in which both Jews and Muslims live, will tomorrow be attacked by the Christians. All of us are so afraid and have gathered in the square.
Behold! A bald Brazilian man with a neatly cropped beard descends from a cloud.

A man asks him: ‘Speak to us about defeat.’ And the Brazilian answers: ‘Defeat is not so bad, for everything is part of the Divine Energy. Remember the Circle of Life. The gazelle may be eaten by the lion, but the gazelle eats the grass. Such is God’s way.’

Another man asks him: ‘Speak to us about platitudes.’ And the Brazilian answers: ‘If I can get away with this drivel, then there is hope for all of us. Even the most useless of you can appreciate the shining of the sun. Unless it is raining. Learn to take pride in all your achievements, however small. If you have stayed at home in bed, delight in the fact you have not driven your car and knocked over a pedestrian.’

Another man asks him: ‘Speak to us about fear.’ And the Brazilian says: ‘None of us can escape the Unwanted Visitor of Death. So learn to chill out. A mountain is not afraid to stay in the same place. A man who has had one leg amputated is not so fearful of having the other one hacked off. You have nothing to lose but your limbs. Difficulty is the name of an ancient tool that was created purely to help us define who we are. Chisel is another.’

Another man asks him: ‘Speak to us about beauty.’ And the Brazilian says: ‘Do not believe those who say it is only Inner Beauty that counts. Otherwise why would God have made me so handsome? Ugliness is a mask worn by hideous people who are too afraid to allow themselves to feel the Divine Energy and be loved. True Love, though, is the Love that Seduces and will never allow itself to be Seduced.’

Another man says: ‘That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard. Surely anyone Seduced by True Love cannot Experience True Love?’ And the Brazilian gave him a withering look of contempt before replying: ‘The rest is silence, Grasshopper.’

A woman asks him: ‘Speak to us of sex.’ And the Brazilian says: ‘It is when two rivers meet to become a more beautiful, more powerful river. And if my meaning is still unclear, email me at
[email protected]
.’

Another man asks him: ‘Why are some men poets and some men labourers?’ And the Brazilian says: ‘One day a man shall come who will write, ‘Close your eyes, yet do not sleep/For I will take you to the Deepest Deep.’ And that man will be me. Do not chastise yourself for being quite dim. For if you were bright, you would not buy this book and I would not be loaded.’

Another man asks him: ‘Tell us what the future holds.’ And the Brazilian says: ‘The Unwanted Visitor may arrive at any moment. So always have clean underwear and take heed that one man went to mow, went to mow a meadow. Listen to the wind, but do not forget your horse. Or your lawn mower. Think also of a shelf that collapses and breaks an array of painted vases. But do not ask why. Do not fear failure. Each day is a new beginning, so treat it as if it were your last.’

With that the Rabbi, the Imam and the Priest cry ‘Good idea’ and kill themselves rather than each other, before a final man asks: ‘Speak to us of miracles.’ And the Brazilian says: ‘You’ve carried on reading till the end.’

Digested read, digested:
Manuscript Found in Adustbin.

In the heart of ancient Palestine stood a six-foot-nine-inch giant. Against him was a five-foot-nothing midget. No one gave the
midget a prayer. The giant’s name was Goliath. The midget’s name was David. You might have read about their battle in the Old Testament. But the Bible got it wrong. David was not the underdog.

Most people make assumptions about power and jump to ridiculous conclusions. Who does not think the country with the most men and weaponry will automatically win a war? Not counting those of you who lived through Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Take the American invasion of Grenada. Although Grenada was much the smaller country, it actually held all the aces. Had Grenada played its cards just a little better, the US would have been wiped off the face of the earth.

Vivek Ranadive decided to coach his daughter’s basketball team. Vivek realised that most coaches had made the simple error of packing their teams with players who were at least 6ft 7in. His daughter’s friends were 5ft 3in. Vivek understood his team could run through the legs of the opposition before climbing on to each other’s shoulders to score a slam dunk. They beat the Boston Celtics 89–12. In their dreams.

Can you have too much money? Personally, I don’t think you can, or I would have stopped chancing my arm with counterintuitive anecdotes long ago. But research shows you can. Jim was very happy when he didn’t have much money. Now he’s a top Hollywood producer and not very happy. See what I mean?

Richard is dyslexic. Most people would consider it to be a disadvantage. But Richard worked very hard, got a bit lucky and founded his Virgin empire. Richard could not have done this had he not been dyslexic. Having dyslexia is actually a blessing and anyone who has the condition and has not become a billionaire should be ashamed.

Learning to understand when your disadvantage is an advantage and not a disadvantage can be tricky. Katy was devastated when her entire
family was wiped out in an air crash. Then she realised that at least she was alive and would inherit all the money. She went on to become a moderately successful real-estate agent in Florida.

Terry was a large trout in a North American lake. After graduating top of the class from the lake’s high school, Terry decided to travel to the ocean to make his fortune. He got gobbled up by Thomas the tuna. Sometimes, it really is better to be a big fish in a little pond, rather a little fish in a big pond.

In 1963, Martin Luther King went to Birmingham, Alabama. Martin Luther King was black. Birmingham, Alabama, was known to be the most racist city in the USA. Therefore, Birmingham, Alabama, was not a safe place for Martin Luther King. But Martin Luther King went anyway. If Martin Luther King had been white, no one would have noticed his presence in Birmingham, Alabama. But because Martin Luther King had the courage to be black and he did go to Birmingham, Alabama, the civil rights movement made significant progress.

Less is sometimes more. And more is sometimes less. It’s all a question of perception. Bobby was a career criminal. When California introduced a three strikes and you go to jail policy, Bobby went on a killing spree. The penalties for murder were so severe, they made no difference to him. But when California reduced the maximum sentence from 238 years to 110 years, Bobby decided to go straight. Bobby went to Harvard and became a traffic cop in Iowa.

There was once a boy who looked a bit different. We’ll call him Leo Sayer. Because that’s his name. Some people laughed at Leo because he had silly hair. Others didn’t want to be his friend because he was always telling them that he was right and they were wrong. Leo decided to use his odd hair and off-putting mannerisms to his advantage and changed his name to Malcolm. Malcolm wrote a
book telling people how everything they knew was wrong. It became a bestseller. So Malcolm wrote another book just the same. And another. He even rewrote Aesop’s Fables. Still no one noticed. Malcolm cultivated a persona of being an outsider while earning huge amounts of money from banks, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies. Malcolm earns more for a one-hour talk than you will earn in a year. So who is laughing now?

Digested read, digested:
You make me feel like snoring.

It has long been fashionable to decry the British empire as a relic of imperial repression, and while it is not my intention to excuse its worst excesses, it is important for a good-looking historian to take a contrary position. So I contend it was also a considerable force for good.

Every iconoclast needs a neologism; mine is Anglobalisation. Other empire builders were little more than pirates, exploiting resources for their own end while seeking to impose their culture and religion on the local inhabitants. Britain, of course, was not entirely exempt in this respect but her interests lay far more in establishing a world free-trade market.

Stroll down the elegant boulevards of old Philadelphia and think of all the things that would not have existed had the world not had the benefit of my, sorry our, munificence. Sydney, Freetown, Bombay, Calcutta: all founded and built by the British. Would they have been created anyway, you might ask? Well, yes, but not nearly so well.

In 1897, the year of her Diamond Jubilee, Queen Victoria reigned supreme over 25% of the world’s surface; informally, through her economic activities in Latin America, her imperial reach extended still further. Wondrous times. In a spirit of unflinching altruism Britain exported its peoples and its capital to all corners of the globe, often at significant cost to itself. And where’s the gratitude, that’s what I want to know.

I have now reached the most solemn point of the story. It was the British Empire that alone stood up to two of the most evil empires in history in 1940 and singlehandedly saved the world from
the thousand-year Reich. No greater love hath any empire than it lays down its life for its friends. In an act of Judas-like betrayal, it was the Americans, whose anti-colonial ideals sit uneasily with its own history both within and without its borders, who brought about our collapse. Britain was almost bankrupted saving the world, and America sought to expedite it in the late 1940s to acquire our markets for itself. Blame the Americans for the bloodbath of decolonisation. And what has the US given the world in return? Nothing.

All things considered, both Britain and myself can look ourselves in the mirror and be pretty damned pleased with what we see.

Digested read, digested:
Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

The title of this book differs by only two letters from
A Brief History of Time
that I wrote in 1988. That book stayed on the bestseller list for 237 weeks; a remarkable feat for a book that no one understood. Three years ago, I attempted to simplify my ideas in
The Universe in a Nutshell
, but I now gather that no one understood that, either. So, I’m now giving you a third and final chance. At the very least, you will begin to grasp the concept of circular time.

So pay attention. As Einstein points out, time may be relative, but mine’s more valuable than yours. We’re searching for a grand unified theory, but haven’t got one, because general relativity and quantum mechanics are inconsistent with one another. So let’s
start with Newton, who gave us the three laws of motion, which describe how bodies react to forces, and the theory of gravity.

Newton refused to accept the lack of absolute space, even though his laws implied it, but he believed wholeheartedly in absolute time. This was a mistake, as everyone has their own four-dimensional spacetime. Einstein’s theory of general relativity is based on the revolutionary suggestion that gravity is not a force like other forces, but a consequence of the fact that spacetime is curved. Light rays, too, must follow geodesics in spacetime, as relativity predicts light will be bent by gravitational fields.

Thanks to the Doppler effect, we know that the universe is expanding as the light-shifts of stars veer towards the red end of the spectrum. If you listen carefully, you can also pick up cosmic noise, which is, in fact, the glow of microwave radiation from the early formation of the universe. So how did the universe start? All solutions to Einstein’s equations point to the fact that at some time in the past the universe was squashed into a single point with zero size. At this point, which we call big bang, the density of the universe and the curvature of spacetime would have been infinite, so unfortunately all theories of cosmology break down.