The Great Reset

One of my favorite anecdotes in Nassim Taleb’s fascinating book Antifragile is Taleb’s recounting of his bellyaching to his father about events in Beirut that led him to flee to the United States.  Taleb bemoaned the fact that they had a nice middle class life in Lebanon when war broke out in 1982 and they had to give all that up and they were forced to leave the country.  Taleb’s father said to Nassim, “You were on the road to becoming a beach bum in Beirut.  You have become a noted author and speaker in the United States.  Sometimes lives need to be shaken up.”

Now, it probably would have been better if our lives had not all been shaken up at the same time, but here we are.  All of us are in the midst of a seismic shift.  It is uncomfortable, but not all of it is bad.  It should be clear to most people by now that there we will not be going back to normal, and in certain respects, that is a good thing.

The Hard Stop.  

In mid-March, we were all told to “shelter in place,” to hunker down in our homes and work remotely to “flatten the curve.”   While we cannot dispute the disruption that this caused in our daily lives, there was a hidden benefit.   First of all, for those of us that live and work near urban environments, it was a gift of 8-10 hours of time a week that we didn’t have to spend commuting to our offices.  Most of us, especially families with two people working and children, live pretty frantic lives attempting to juggle all the demands modern life places on us.  The extra time gave us some time to read, to think, to reflect and think hard about priorities, time we are rarely permitted to have in our day to day lives. 

Professional Sports.   

Professional sports has been at the center of American culture for the last 50-60 years or so.  So much so, that we have afforded it generous tax subsidies and, in the case of the NFL and NBA, minor leagues that are free to the league and themselves tax subsidized (NCAA).  And by allowing the teams to bargain as one with an exemption from anti-trust laws, money poured into the leagues.  Most athletes that played in to 60’s and 70’s had to get real jobs when they retired.  They became ordinary working people when their playing days were done.   But over the past 35 years or so, things have gotten out of hand.  Their incomes and lifestyles bear no relation to the average working person’s.

Over this period, we have become conditioned to become spectators, rather than doers.  School systems have become structured not around the mental and physical health of all students but around the elite athlete.  As more of us turn away from viewing pro sports (opening night NFL viewership was down 16%), we will hopefully be substituting activities that require us to DO physical things—golf, tennis, hiking, gardening, hunting and such, rather than watch someone else DO things  It was one thing when pro sports involved manufactured rivalries- Yankees vs. Red Sox or Bears vs. Packers.  But it is trying to drag in real ones now.  When the underlying message is cops versus criminals, blacks versus whites, or worse, them versus the United States, it’s time to close the door, put down the remote and go outside into the great outdoors. 

Reshuffled relationships.

Friends have also been reshuffled.  It began with the 2016 campaign and election.  I belonged to a regular golf foursome of never-Trumpers, Trump haters that would spend the entire round carping about Trump, calling him a fascist, a Nazi, a racist and otherwise maligning him.  I respectfully asked them to divert the conversation to other topics, “I play to get away from work and other stresses and to enjoy your company.  We can talk about anything you want--- film, sports, books, even boobs- men always like to talk about boobs.  Just not Trump.”   They couldn’t do it and I eventually left the group.  Others have had similar experiences.  Long term friendships have ruptured.  Parents have disowned children.  Potential marriages have been scuttled.

But other friendships have formed or reformed, both in real life and on line.   While some relationships have been shattered, pandemic and the social discord has caused people have reconnected with old friends, classmates and relatives.  Several people have told me about this phenomena and it has happened to me.  I came to the conclusion that people that would criticize or label me or turn their backs on me because of politics were probably not worth having around anyway.  And the new and renewed relationships have proven to be very worthwhile. 

The people with whom I have spoken about the reshuffling of relationships have told me that this has taken them by surprise.  But we need to keep in mind that we have largely been insulated from this for a couple of generations.  Many of our grandparents and great grand parents left Europe, severed relationships to start a new life here.  Some had a difficult time adjusting (as the character Mr. Shimerda in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, who commits suicide because he cannot adjust to life away from his home in Czechoslovakia), but others embraced forming new friendships and relationships. 

If there is one nonfiction book I urge you to read in this disruptive time, it’s Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile.  While it will not relieve the discomfort and disorientation we are all feeling right now, it will help you think about how to regain some equilibrium and indeed find some positive aspects of The Great Reset, and turn them to your advantage.  If you look closely, you will find that some of the changes that you are being forced to make were changes that needed to be made.