Blue-and-White in Santo Domingo

Walking back from a live screening of the Met Opera, I heard music coming from the next block.  Loud music is not unusual in Oaxaca, but as I rounded the corner, I was stopped in my tracks by a sea of Israeli flags. Then, I took in the men, women, and children, that filled the street, waving the flags while singing in harmony.  At the end of the alley, on a stage in front of Santo Domingo Church, a youthful group motivated the enthusiastic crowd with Christian Rock.  The surreal situation soon began to make sense.  This Christian congregation was celebrating Israel's Independence Day.  I lingered for a while, clapped my hands in rhythm, then continued to a delicious Oaxacan dinner.

This is not the oddest Christian Congregation in Oaxaca.  The Messianic Jews adhere to all the rules of the Torah as strictly as any Orthodox Jew.  Some of them even speak Hebrew.

Amour, directed by Michael Haneke

The movie "Amour" was recently presented as part of the Oaxaca International Film Festival.  In the movie, Anne and George are aging gracefully together.  We can observe the quiet love and respect they share.  Suddenly, Anne suffers a stroke.  Her condition continuously deteriorates until she can not take care of herself, nor communicate with her family.  George tends to all of his invalid wife's needs.  He does so with love and tenderness.  Only rarely does he display resentment towards this hard and thankless job.  Anne cannot express herself, yet we can share her suffering.  Although she has some brief quasi-lucid moments, at other times it is clear that she would rather end her life.  Eventually, George complies by smothering her under a pillow.   The story is sad, yet it is told in a factual and non-emotional manner.  I was impressed by the way the couple, and eventually George alone, face their situation with calm acceptance, without resorting to self pity, and without soliciting the pity of others.  The acting is excellent, and Haneke, in his usual dark style, displays meticulous mastery of the movie-making art.

The movie prompted me to review my attitudes towards life.  I realized that I am not afraid of death, nor do I crave a long life.  I exercise daily and eat well in order to stay active far into old age, hoping that when the inevitable decline arrives, it will be short and steep.  If that declining path is lined with extreme discomfort,  I believe I can make a calm choice whether to follow it to its natural end, or not.  Most important, I think that Dignity is a higher value than Life.  Dignity, to me, is being aware, being able to communicate this awareness, and having some control over my environment.  I should take steps now, that would help my loved ones, if these criteria are not met, to make the same hard decision as George.

"Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

"If you have more than one reason to do something," says Taleb "just don't do it."
This is one of the many exasperatingly true edicts I found in "Antifragile", a book that changed the way I view the world.  Taleb is a modern day prophet.  He points out the errors of our ways, loudly rallies against the evil-doers  (Economists, bankers, and politicians), and warns us to return to the "righteous" path (Antifragile). Prophets are often derided until their predictions come true.  Taleb  has earned his prophet credentials by predicting the banking meltdown, and profiting nicely from it.  His book is approachable, sprinkled with personal stories and entertaining parables (Math equations are confined to the appendix).  I have only one reason for my attempt to condense it.

Taleb's observations:

1.  Social systems and natural systems are similar.  Both domains are complex, non-linear, and composed of  little-understood inter-dependencies.  Any attempts to model them is bound to be simplistic and inaccurate.
2.  Such systems are affected by external events- "stressors".
     2.1 The stressors are random in frequency and magnitude.
     2.2 Low magnitude stressors occur frequently.  Stressors of high magnitude occur very rarely.
     2.3 It is impossible to predict the timing or even the probability of these rare events.  (A very small error in estimating the shape of the distribution curve will cause a big change in the prediction)
     2.4  However, history has been largely shaped by those large-cataclysmic rare events.  Taleb names them "Black Swans."
3.  With enough time and variability,  anything fragile will break.  However, nature, our body, and economic systems survive due to their ability to learn and improve from variability.  They are "Antifragile".  Quoting Nietzsche, "Whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger"

Too much human intervention disrupts the natural tendency to self-heal.  We are becoming more fragile and more susceptible to Black Swans.

4.  We don't like uncertainty.  Catering to this tendency, economist try, unsuccessfully  to predict the future. Hearing these prediction, (even knowing they are wrong), we make risky decisions, resulting in catastrophes.
5.  We don't like variability.  We appoint people (like Greenspan) to reduce it.  As a result, instead of experiencing many small slowdowns, from which the system can recover and improve, we get large meltdowns.
6.  Our society promotes a new class of people such as Bankers and politicians, who have great power, yet take no risk.  We, the public, carry the risk and bear the losses.
7.  We let physicians, and the big pharmas, over-medicate us, exposing us to the rare but real danger of unintentional harm..

Taleb suggests that the way to handle variability and mitigate the problems above, is to become more Antifragile.  One of his definitions for the term is as follows.
"Anything that has more upside than downside from random events is Antifragile."  The reverse is "Fragile."  Something that is not affected by variability is "Robust"

Below is some of his advice on how to survive, and even thrive from variability (my order).

8.  Don't try to compute risk.   "It is far easier to figure out if something is fragile than to predict the occurrence of an event that may harm it."  Once fragility is detected, work to reduce it.
9.  Top-down is fragile.  Bottom-up  thrives under stress.
    9.1 City-states are better and more effective than modern Nation-states.
10.  Big is fragile.  Create disincentives for companies to grow to "too big to fail" status.
11.  New discoveries are made by engineers/tinkerers, not in bureaucratically-funded academia.  Develop an environment that tolerates (even honors) failure (i.e. Silicon Valley).
12.  Do less.  Better still, procrastinate.  Avoid interference with things we do not understand.  Let time take care of it.
13.  Look for opportunities for exercising optionality.  Optionality provides limited downside and open-ended upside.
14.  Limit medical treatments to situations where the benefits are large and clear.
13.  Adopt a "Barbell"  strategy.  A strategy that employs a combination of extremes, while avoiding the middle.
       13.1  Combine aggressiveness and paranoia.  Play it safe in some areas (robust to negative Black Swans) and take many small risks in others (open to positive Black Swans.)
       13.2  Put 90% of your funds in (inflation proof) cash, and the other 10% in extremely risky securities.
       13.3  Exercise hard, than take long rest periods.
       13.4  Eat a large steak, then abstain from meat for a few days.
       13.5  Marry an accountant, and have an affair with a rock star.

Enjoy the book.