AugureyeExpress April 16 2014
It is a stormy night sometime in the winter of 1694 off the poorly charted western shore ofAustralia. The Dutch trading vessel Ridderschap Van Holland is foundering in the heavy swells. She is the flagship of the Dutch trading fleet and had sailed from Cape of Good Hope on February 5th with 300 crew and two passengers; they never arrived and were presumed lost at sea. Two years later the Dutch sailing Captain Willem de Vlamingh went searching for survivors with an expedition of three ships. The mission was a failure as no survivors or clues were ever discovered. On the return trip the expedition charted the western shores of Australia thereby improving navigation on the Indian ocean route to the Dutch east Indies. On January 10th of 1697 de Vlamingh ventured up the swan river; they were the first Europeans to ever do so. He named it Zwaanernenriver, which is Dutch for Swan River….after seeing huge numbers of Black Swans, which until that day were considered an impossibility since all swans are white.
Following this discovery the English coined the term “black swan” as a statement of impossibility flowing from the assumption that all swans are white. The importance of the simile is it’s analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. Any set of conclusions are potentially undone once any fundamental postulates are disproved. The Black Swan Theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2004 book, Fooled by Randomness which was primarily concerned with the world of finance. His next book in 2007 expanded the Black Swan Theory to encompass societal & political realities on Earth as well as the financial angle.
Identifying a Black Swan Event
Taleb’s general advice is to not so much try to predict black swan events as it is to prepare and brace yourself against negative outcome events. Taleb saw the black swan as something different, and set aside form the ordinary unexpected events which occur across our world with ever increasing frequency. The black swan is in fact; a set of circumstances which must all be present for it to be considered a true black swan event. Taleb lists three conditions that identify a true black swan event. [BSE]
1. The event is a complete surprise, taking everyone off guard, (such as the sudden failure of Lehman Brothers, or the disaster at Fukushima.)
2. The event has a major impact on the world.
3. After the event, it is rationalized by hindsight as if it could have been expected.
Taleb says that all banks and trading firms are extremely vulnerable to black swan events and are exposed to losses far beyond the normal, expected range. When dealing with this subject we must also take into consideration Counterfactual Thinking which is the tendency people have to imagine alternatives to reality. Humans are predisposed to think about what might have been. This is why, as a counselor, I would always tell my clients to never finish a thought beginning with the words “what if” or “if only”- because those thoughts seldom produce a positive constructive resonance, and tend to be a waste of your time. It is an altogether different thing to do such musing before, rather than after some important event in your life.
The Usual Suspects
Once we know what to look for we can easily identify some of the major black swan events of the past as noted above. With that perspective we can also take stock of the current state of the human condition, and make some educated guesses as to the identity of possible future BSE’s. Listed here are the eight leading contenders for a world changing black swan event:
1. Severe Pandemic
2. Accelerated climate change
3. Collapse of the Euro zone economy
4. A Democratic, or collapsed China
5. A reformed Iran
6. Nuclear war – WMD or Cyber attack
7. Coronal Mass Ejection from our Sun
8. America falls.
Although some of these scenarios are being currently discussed these days; which is what makes them the usual suspects, we must remember that by their very nature BSE’s possess a magnitude which surprises even those who were clued in. In other words, it’s only a black swan event for the turkey, not the butcher, the trick is, don’t be the turkey!
To give you some perspective on just how strange things have become. When I moved to Alaska to live in the remote wilderness it was because I sought to isolate myself from the madness of modern life, and prepare for some very uncertain times ahead. My family and friends called me a survivalist and thought I was nuts for doing it. Today we see so many people doing exactly what I did in 1979 they even have their own TV reality show. They call them preppers and these days my family and friends think I’m nuts for notdoing it! Been there, done that! The idea is to make sensible preparations and contingency plans for yourself that work for your situation. What works for one may be unfeasible to another. Furthermore, since those days so long ago I have come to see and know so much more than I did then. I still see Earth as a very dangerous place to get along on but you cannot focus on the negative so much you become obsessive. It blinds you to other, more spiritual awareness’s which I believe are as fundamental to survival as food and water, perhaps even more so. Never get locked into a single world view.
In the case of widespread severe pandemic there is little one can do beyond some rudimentary precautions and living a healthy life style. This potential BSE has the ability to wipe mankind from the face of the Earth in a worst case scenario. Once released it could race across the globe with every transcontinental airline flight and be well established by many days or even weeks before we even knew it was there, depending on whether it is Ebola, Sars, Hanta virus, Avian Flu, or any one of a hundred genetically created “viral agents” that Darpa has secretly cooked up.
Accelerated climate change is already well upon us now and from what I’ve been seeing and reading, there is little confidence that the current cycle won’t somehow hit a critical mass sufficient to snowball out of control, (pardon the pun.) Of course our dutiful masters want us in a constant state of fearful apprehension which is why they pre-condition us with a plethora of climate themed disaster films such as “The day after tomorrow” and of course the blockbuster “2012.” We are just so much easier to manipulate when we’re always afraid of what might be just around the corner. Just last week I watched an incredulous TV weatherman doing a remote broadcast covering the highly unseasonable snowstorm in New York. The signs of climate change are all around us, all we have to do is look and be willing to see. Of course, as with everything else, the powers that be seek to hide the truth within an artificially constructed bubble of controversy over climate change, trying to get us to believe it’s all an internet hoax.
As for usual suspect number three all I can say once again, is look around at what has been happening in recent weeks; in Greece, and of course in Cyprus. It’s the bailout boogaloo song & dance, just another scheme to grab simply everything before the bell rings and the balloon goes up. It’s all a contrived carefully orchestrated scheme to not just steal all the money, but to leave millions of people broke and powerless in a most dangerous point in our history. You may have noticed how “they” are also suddenly obsessed with confiscation all our weapons too. Hmmm People who are broke, starved & unarmed might just hop on those FEMA busses a lot more quietly and passively, especially if promised food. History shows us many examples where those in power use food as a weapon of mass compliance. It works! So, if the EU collapses, as it certainly appears it might, don’t you believe for a moment it won’t impact the entire world, as the dominoes continue to fall.
