April 25, 2009 — A couple of years ago a man named Nassim Taleb wrote "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable," about how dramatic, unpredictable events shape our lives and confuse our minds.
The term "Black Swan" comes from an ancient assumption that all swans are white. Aristotle was one of the first to use black swans as an example of things that just aren’t possible, like cold fire or dark sunlight.
But in the 17th century black swans were discovered in Australia, blowing Aristotle’s use of the metaphor while simultaneously creating another one: Black Swan became a metaphor for something extremely unlikely which occurs randomly and unpredictably: something that can’t happen, but does happen.
Taleb contends that randomness and uncertainty are a fact of life, therefore a predictable principle of human experience.
Ten years ago today (April 20, 2009) two not-quite-men loaded themselves up with multiple weapons of individual destruction, blasting 13 other souls and themselves out of this life and blasting our nation out of one of its fondest fantasies: that a schoolhouse is a safe place for kids. In less than an hour two sick-minded kids changed the way millions of people think and live
The enormity of the Columbine massacre in a relatively bucolic Denver suburb reshaped our common life and confused our collective minds. It couldn’t happen, but it did! A Black Swan. A forever reminder that no matter how absolutely sure of something you are, there could be something somewhere you don’t know about, can’t even imagine, that might pop up and shoot down your certainty
Now that messes up your mind! Especially if your Black Swan involves religious belief, your religious belief
There is a religious mentality which expects the Almighty to shoo all Black Swans out of the world, at least out of their lives, at least the biggest, blackest, meanest ones. When it doesn’t happen they whine "Why did God let this happen to me?"
That’s a bad / skewed question. It presumes God is a deus ex machina cosmic superpower off someplace called Heaven, pulling levers and pushing buttons and making things happen on earth; making everything happen on earth. If that were true, God would be the instigator of the Columbine massacre and killer storms and babies killed by bombs and everything else that is good or bad from a human perspective.
In God’s world Black Swans just happen.
Religion must not be thought of as a divine insurance policy issued by God and backed by all the resources of omnipotence, expected to provide the comforting certainty that the insured is protected from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Religion that purports to provide certainty is false religion. Uncertainty is terribly unsettling. So live with it!
The most miserable state of human consciousness is not uncertainty, it is hopelessness.
Honest religion enables us to live with uncertainty. It fosters hope rather than certainty. If you can do that you are practicing true religion even if you are not "religious."
Of course not all Black Swans are bad. Sometimes we are surprised by joy.
Life is a place where anything might happen, even things that can’t happen. The Black Swans are out there: count on it.
Editor’s note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. And in Pushkin, Russia, a toilet is named in his honor.
