Get Stronger from stressors!
Obi-Wan Kenobi’s quote from Star Wars always reminds me of Antifragility:
“If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
In a sideways way, this ties into the metaphor of the phoenix being reborn from the ashes of the dragon—and of the hydra having its head cut off, only to have two replace it.
Using alliteration, it’s: getting stronger from stressors, more settled from shaking, more adaptable from attacks.
In a way, antifragility is a faster form of Natural Selection.
Antifragility is closely related to resilience/robustness, although resilience shouts “Still standing after stressors!”
This is better than the belief that we have to protect things from stressors!
It makes more sense to make things antifragile instead.
Antifragility in the body and in fitness
We have this belief that if we get injured, we’re irreversably damaged. But the body has antifragility built into it.
Muscles get stronger when we work them out and tear them.
Antifragility in the mind
Right now I think of this mostly with students and how they’re so fragile and they’re so quick to not be resilient
Antifragility in materials and repairing things
Everything needs work to maintain
But are you “maintaining” just to keep the status quo or as you repair and fix things it’s actually growing and changing and adapting in the process?
Here’s a fantastic image on how these systems work.
“Use it or lose it” is a good way to think about it As you start It slowly grows It compounds
An antifragile note system
I’m doing a note system that doesn’t decay That as I use it, it becomes better and more useful Instead of something that becomes deteriorated as it gets used more
Homesteading Cast Iron
I think the Cast Iron is an amazing example of this That as you use it and care for it It gets better instead of worse
The violin? The teapot?
There are several things I think that fit under this category
Antifragile and personalized
Maybe it’s something that becomes more linked to you It’s antifragile because as you use it, it becomes more linked to your own style and personality So it fits you more and more.
Aim for antifragile systems
So that’s what it comes down to Thinking of systems and things that are antifragile
The problem for example with a capitalist kind of thinking Is that these items are not antifragile enough As you use them, they deteriorate and then things just decay
and it’s over. It’s useless and you throw it away
Read more at: Antifragility - Wikipedia
Go one level up : Concepts MOC You may also be interested in: Hormesis and the Lindy Effect