Antifragile
Pastors Leslie & Adeline Chua
“Although he was a son,
he learned obedience through what he suffered.
”
In recent years, there is a significant increase in depression and suicide among young people in Singapore and other affluent countries. The culprit as you would have guessed is stress due to pressure from various sources.
In the United States, a strange phenomenon is currently taking place. Professors are screamed down, and guest speakers, mostly conservative, are disinvited. Some of these events are disrupted as student activists resorted to violence in their attempt to prevent them from speaking.
The reason is violence. Violence not as in physical violence, but their ideas and views. Violence has been redefined and reinterpreted to mean harsh and unsympathetic speech. These college students deem any opinions which are contrary to theirs as unsafe, discriminatory, and hateful. They insist upon their colleges and universities to protect them from such violence.
Under intense pressure, many academic institutions cave in. Besides banning certain speakers and firing those professors who do not toe the politically correct liberal line, they put up new rules and create safe spaces to control speech and prevent any form of potential “violence.”
In their bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, pointed out that this is a recent phenomenon. It began sometime in 2011 and became a rage beginning in 2014-2015 when the iGen or Gen Z, referring to those born in 1995 and after, started going to colleges.
All these fiascos reveal an underlying fragility in the young generation.
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Parents of iGen tend to coddle their children.
They are overly protective and indulgent. ____________________________________________
There are several reasons for this peculiar phenomenon. Addiction to electronic devices and social media plays an important albeit destructive role. The introduction of the iPhone in the middle of 2007 forever changed the way humans interacted and socialise with one another. Its adverse impact on the iGen is only well understood recently.
Parenting Style Contributes to Children’s Fragility
Another significant reason, which many people miss, is the style of parenting, which is markedly different from the previous generations. It is most probably the product of better education and more affluence. Parents of the iGen tend to coddle their children. They are overly protective and indulgent.
You should have heard of the term, helicopter parenting. These parents hover like a helicopter over their kids 24-7. They are ever watchful, never letting their children out of their sight. They are paranoid about the well-being and safety of their kids, and so rarely let them take any risk.
I learned of another parenting style recently. It is called bulldozer parenting. These parents clear every conceivable obstacle out of their children’s path. Nothing is allowed to stand in the way to hinder their children.
Parents of the iGen are afraid of their children falling sick. So, they pump them with the best nutritional supplements, sanitise their hands and bowls, and bacterial wipe the things they touch.
They are afraid of their children getting hurt. So, they shield them from all kinds of risks. Computer games are okay, but not rough plays, even for boys. Many things are considered off-limits because they pose a danger to their children.
These parents would not allow their kids to be disadvantaged in any way. Should the slightest thing happen to them in school, they would demand an explanation from the teachers. I have heard of parents raising their voices and behaving rudely toward teachers and principals.
Many of these children grow up not knowing discipline and punishment. Their parents love them too much to take them to task. How many times have I seen parents negotiating with their kids to follow their instructions! Usually, the parents lost the battle of wills when their children started to throw tantrum.
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Nowadays, most parents focus
on their children’s intellectual development,
but ignore building their capacity.
You need both capability and capacity to thrive in life.
Having one without the other
handicaps your children’s ability to succeed in life. ____________________________________________
As you can see, the iGen are well provided and excessively sheltered. The parents’ intention is good and sincere. They want to give the best of everything to their children. Unfortunately, by doing so, they deprive their kids of precious opportunities to learn how to be tough, fend for themselves, solve their own problems and deal with difficult people and situations.
Consequently, these children grow up fragile, lacking in mental fortitude and deficient in emotional strength. They might be smart, but they lack street smartness. They might be intelligent. However, they lack the capacity to cope with the challenges and adversities of life, which cannot be avoided.
Nowadays, most parents focus on their children’s intellectual development but ignore building their capacity. You need both capability and capacity to thrive in life. Having one without the other handicaps your children’s ability to succeed in life.
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A good education prepares you
to be competent intellectually
and in the areas of technical skills,
but capacity is built
through trials and testing in life. ____________________________________________
I have seen so many intelligent people failing in their relationships, career, and life not because of their lack of abilities but due to a lack of capacity to manage the pressures and stresses of modern life. They are handicapped by anxiety, depression, the inability to cope with rejection, lack of mental fortitude to persevere through adversity, and deficiency in resilience to pick themselves up after a failure.
I believe this is a primary reason for the alarming rise in mental health issues among young people. This is the same reason the iGen in the U.S. is screaming for safe spaces and the elimination of all potential and perceived harm in their campuses.
The Peanut Allergy Example
A good education prepares you to be competent intellectually and in the areas of technical skills, but capacity is built through adversities and trials in life. You cannot learn it in any other way. You must be exposed to the fires and afflictions of life. You must go through trying and challenging experiences. Through it all, you will learn to manage these difficult circumstances and build up your capacity.
Let me give you this analogy to drive home my point.
In the mid-nineties, the U.S. experienced a minor health crisis. The rate of peanut allergies among young people soared. To protect their students, many schools banned peanut consumption altogether.
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When you overly protect your children
from challenges in life,
you run the risk of them growing up
without the capacity to cope
with their lives independently in the future. ____________________________________________
It sounded like a good idea until a study in 2015 showed that shielding children from peanuts actually contributed to the surge in allergies. The researchers found that without early and repeated exposure to peanuts, many of the kids’ immune systems never learned how to deal with them. Consequently, it leads to serious allergies later.
In the same way, when you overly protect your children from challenges in life, you run the risk of them growing up without the capacity to cope with their lives independently in the future. They will certainly experience more and worse problems in their adulthood. What is going to happen to them? Unwittingly, by coddling them when they are young, you are setting them up for failure when they grow up.
Developing Antifragility Through Afflictions & Adversities
Fragility is a liability. A fragile person cracks up easily. We need to develop antifragility.
Antifragile is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name. It does not just mean robustness. Antifragile means more than that. It refers to something that becomes stronger and tougher as a result of experiencing pressure and adversity.
Think of diamonds. It is not just the best friend of women. Diamonds are regarded as the hardest known material in the world. Besides being made into jewellery, industrial diamonds are embedded in saw blades, drill bits, and grinding wheels for cutting, drilling, and grinding hard materials.
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The concept of antifragility also applies to humans.
We become antifragile when we are exposed
to afflictions and adversities.
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How are diamonds formed? Diamonds are carbon which had been subjected to intense heat and pressure underneath the earth crust for a long time.
Think of tempered glass and steel. They are treated with fire at high temperatures. Consequently, their physical properties change. They become stronger, tougher, and more resilient. They do not break easily. In other words, they become antifragile.
The concept of antifragility also applies to humans. We become antifragile when we are exposed to afflictions and adversities.
God’s Parenting Style
In the bible, we notice that God used this antifragility principle to build character and capacity into His people, especially those who would be entrusted with great authority and responsibilities.
Joseph is a fine example. He was a promising teenager. He enjoyed the favour of his father. God also had a grand plan for his life. He would be the Prime Minister of Egypt, which was a superpower in the ancient Near East at that time.
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The privileged kid was moulded
through a series of heart-wrenching adversity.
He persevered and prevailed,
and emerged antifragile.
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It would be a tough job. Imagine a Hebrew serving as the second-in-command and chief operating officer in a foreign land at a time of widespread famine.
To prepare him for the job, God put him through a journey of rejection, betrayal, slavery, false accusation, and unjust imprisonment. The privileged kid was moulded through a series of heart-wrenching adversity. He persevered and prevailed, and emerged antifragile.
The fiery trials and severe afflictions tempered Joseph and made him fortuitous and resilient, and thus fit for the demanding role of pulling Egypt and the entire region successfully out of the disastrous famine.
We see God repeating the same pattern to build antifragility in other biblical characters such as Job, Moses, David, Daniel, Paul, and many others.
The story of Job clearly reveals God setting up Job for a severe test of his faith and loyalty to Him. It was God who instigated Satan to destroy Job’s family, wealth, and health. The afflictions did not destroy Job. Instead, it made him stronger. He became antifragile.
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God does not create safe space
to shield His children from adversities
because He is in the business
of raising tough men and women.
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One of the most fascinating statements in the Bible is found in the Letter to the Hebrews. Referring to Jesus in His humanity, it says – “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). I find it hard to wrap my head around this truth. Even Christ Jesus was not spared from fiery afflictions so that He might learn obedience and become antifragile. Amazing!
This is God’s parenting style! God does not create safe spaces to shield His children from adversities because He is in the business of raising tough men and women.
Raise Antifragile Children
You do not want your children to become snowflakes. Snowflake refers to young people who meltdown easily under the slightest pressure. Instead, you want to raise them to be antifragile to prepare them for their future.
Emulate God’s example. Love them. Care for them. However, do not be overly protective and excessively indulgent. The coddling of their young minds will inevitably lead to the fragility of their souls.
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Prepare the child for the road,
not the road for the child.
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Anyway, realise that you cannot shelter your children for the rest of their lives. So, plan for the well-being of their future. As an old saying goes, prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
May God give you the wisdom to raise antifragile children!