![\"Magazine](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/booksuncertain.jpg\")
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A few days ago, I was playing some one-on-one basketball with my son Gus. As he was taking the ball back to our driveway’s \u201chalf-court line,\u201d he stopped and said, \u201cYou know Dad, COVID has really changed our world really fast.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s an obvious observation, but when your nine-year-old articulates it, it stops you in your tracks for some reason. <\/span><\/p>\n Gus is right. The world has really changed really fast due to the global pandemic. And it continues to change rapidly and fluidly from week to week, and even day to day.<\/span><\/p>\n The global pandemic has reminded us that we live in a world of uncertainty. <\/span><\/p>\n Like a lot of people, I\u2019ve done a fair amount of reflecting during this current crisis. Part of that reflection has turned me towards books that I\u2019ve found helpful in understanding and managing uncertainty in the past. Their insights about dealing with a topsy-turvy world feel more salient than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n Below I share a list of those books that I\u2019ve been revisiting and reflecting upon these past few weeks. They\u2019re a mixture of non-fiction, fiction, and even scripture from different religions. What they all have in common is that they seek to answer the question that has plagued humans for millennia:<\/span><\/p>\n What am I supposed to do now?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n These books have helped me answer that question for myself. Maybe you\u2019ll find them helpful too — not just now, but in the future. For even though there are times when we feel the fickle fluctuations of the world more acutely, life has <\/span>always<\/span><\/i> been uncertain and always will be. <\/span><\/p>\n Since this box set came out, Skin the Game<\/em> has been added to the series.<\/p><\/div>\n Incerto<\/em> is a series of books philosopher and probability scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote that tackles the very issue of how to engage with an uncertain world. The first book, <\/span>Fooled by Randomness<\/span><\/i><\/a>, is about how we perceive (or fail to perceive) the role of chance and luck in our lives. <\/span><\/p>\n The next book in this series, <\/span>The Black Swan<\/span><\/i><\/a>, made famous the concept of black swans — unforeseen, unexpected events that have a significant impact on our lives and which are often later given retrospective explanations that make the events look less random and more predictable than they really were. <\/span><\/p>\n Antifragile<\/span><\/i><\/a> then explores how to live and carry one\u2019s self in a world of uncertainty. Taleb proposes strategies that will not only allow you to be resilient in the face of chaos and crisis, but actually grow from these countervailing forces as well. <\/span><\/p>\n The Bed of Procrustes<\/span><\/i><\/a> is a book of aphorisms designed to expose and highlight the ways we humans fool ourselves into thinking we know what\u2019s going on when we really don\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n Skin in the Game<\/span><\/i><\/a> is Taleb\u2019s fifth and latest edition to his <\/span>Incerto<\/span><\/i> series, and in it, he explores the ethics of living in an uncertain world.<\/span><\/p>\n Taken together, these books provide a big picture roadmap of how to think about and deal with uncertainty. I\u2019ve found myself picking them up a bit more during this pandemic. If you\u2019re only going to read one volume in the series, I\u2019d recommend <\/span>Antifragile<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\n Be sure to check out my podcast with Taleb about Skin in the Game<\/em>.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n There are two types of uncertainty in the world. One type is the uncertainty of the insurance industry\u2019s actuarial tables and the casino\u2019s roulette<\/a> game. This type of uncertainty represents a puzzle which can be navigated using the tools of probability theory. <\/span><\/p>\n The other type of uncertainty can\u2019t be tamed with math. There are just too many factors interacting with each other in complex ways for probability theory to be of any use. This type of uncertainty is <\/span>radical <\/span><\/i>uncertainty. <\/span><\/p>\n In their book on the subject, economists John Kay and Mervyn King make the case that to grapple with radical uncertainty, you need to go beyond data and equations to develop a robust and resilient narrative about your current situation and to then continuously update it by asking yourself, \u201cWhat is going on here?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Lots of great examples from the world of business and war. I found this book to be a useful supplement to Taleb\u2019s <\/span>Incerto <\/span><\/i>series. <\/span><\/p>\n Fighter pilot and philosopher John Boyd<\/a> famously contributed the idea of the OODA Loop to military strategy. But while the OODA Loop is oft-cited, it is typically misunderstood as a superficial four-step process where the individual or group who makes it through all the stages the quickest wins.<\/span><\/p>\n If you truly understand the scientific and philosophical ideas Boyd references in his writing, you discover that the OODA Loop is actually a complex learning system — a multi-faceted method for dealing with uncertainty.<\/span><\/p>\n The problem is, it\u2019s hard to suss out how Boyd\u2019s concepts can be synthesized into this system, as he never wrote down his ideas about the OODA Loop in a formal paper; he only shared his thoughts in oral briefings. <\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s where Frans P.B. Osinga\u2019s book <\/span>Science, Strategy, and War<\/span><\/i> comes in handy. Osinga painstakingly pieces together Boyd\u2019s disparate briefs, notes, and lectures to show how the implications of the OODA Loop extend far beyond a simple four-step process. This is the best book I\u2019ve read on the OODA Loop, and worth your study. For the CliffsNotes version, check out this article. <\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n The capricious buffetings of uncertainty can wreak havoc on our emotions, leaving us feeling anxious, depressed, and helpless. Stoic philosophy<\/a> can help us manage our emotions in times of uncertainty by prompting us to sort through what we can and cannot control, and instructing us to calmly endure the latter and focus on the former.<\/span><\/p>\n Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius was one of the last Stoic philosophers, and today is arguably the best known. Thanks to his personal writings that eventually became <\/span>Meditations<\/span><\/i>, Marcus left us with concrete guidance on how to put Stoicism into action<\/a>. Thousands of years later, it\u2019s still one of the best primers on Stoic philosophy, and is full of maxims that will help you steady your mind in the midst of chaos. <\/span>Check out Jeremy’s takeaways from his first reading of it a few years back.<\/a> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n For the Greeks, theatrical tragedies were more than just entertaining plays: they were a cathartic religious rite that trained the soul. While the storylines differed, philosopher Simon Critchley argues<\/a> that all of the tragedies are about how to live in a world of ambiguity and uncertainty:<\/span><\/p>\n In play after play of the three great tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides), what we see are characters who are utterly disoriented by the situation in which they find themselves. They do not know how to act. We find human beings somehow compelled to follow a path of suffering that allows them to raise questions that admit of no easy answer: What will happen to me? How can I choose the right path of action? The overwhelming experience of tragedy is a disorientation expressed in one bewildered and frequently repeated question: <\/span>What shall I do?<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n While the tragedies don\u2019t provide clear-cut answers to how to solve the mystery of uncertainty, they spur us to think hard about the nature of its vicissitudes. What\u2019s more, they show us that even though we might feel disoriented, we still have to take action and move forward, just like the characters in these plays.<\/span><\/p>\n Sacred Hindu scripture, <\/span>The Baghavad Gita<\/span><\/i> begins in the middle of an apocalyptic war between families. A young warrior named Arjuna rides up to a battle about to unfold with his charioteer Krishna, a god in disguise. <\/span><\/p>\n Arjuna asks Krishna to stop. What Arjuna sees unnerves him: his own kin is gathered together to fight him. As a warrior, Arjuna is duty-bound to take part in the war, but he doesn\u2019t want to raise a sword against his family. He cries out to Krishna, \u201cConflicting sacred duties confound my reason!\u201d He continues his lament:<\/span><\/p>\n My limbs sink, Arjuna sinks to the floor of his chariot, paralyzed by confusion as to what he should do.<\/span><\/p>\n The rest of the <\/span>Gita<\/span><\/i> is Krishna\u2019s counsel to Arjuna on how to carry himself in a world of uncertainty. The big takeaway is the importance of taking action<\/a>, while understanding and accepting that you have little or no control over the outcomes of your actions. Or, as Krishna puts it, \u201cYou have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While we can\u2019t completely control how things turn out, we can always control what we do. And control = courage<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n When bad things happen to good people, we often find ourselves asking God or the universe, \u201cWhy?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n The Book of Job throws that question back at us and asks, \u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Job shows that misfortune can strike the just and the unjust, the good and the evil. And that while we can\u2019t always control the whirlwind of fate, we still have control over how we react to it. <\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise that the Book of Job has been a favorite piece of literature for people who have had to deal with uncertainty on both a personal and a mass scale. Abraham Lincoln often turned to Job during his strife-filled presidency, and writer Joshua Wolf Shenk makes the case<\/a> that it helped shape Lincoln\u2019s spiritual worldview and understanding of the limits and responsibilities of human agency:<\/span><\/p>\n Lincoln responded with both humility and determination. The humility came from a sense that whatever ship carried him on life\u2019s rough waters, he was not the captain but merely a subject of the divine force \u2013 call it fate or God or the ‘Almighty Architect’ of existence. The determination came from a sense that however humble his station, Lincoln was no idle passenger but a sailor on deck with a job to do. In his strange combination of profound deference to divine authority and a willful exercise of his own meager power, Lincoln achieved transcendent wisdom.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The <\/span><\/em>Odyssey<\/span><\/i> is the tale of Odysseus\u2019 ten-year journey home to Ithaca after the decade-long Trojan War. Along the way, he encounters one setback after another. Odysseus\u2019 misfortune is so great that it leaves this epic hero in tears at times. <\/span><\/p>\n But he prevails. <\/span><\/p>\n Why? Because he is \u201cthe man of many wiles.\u201d He\u2019s resourceful, cunning, and adaptable. He understands that in a world of uncertainty, being rigid leads to destruction. You have to learn to bend. But most of all, you have to keep moving forward. <\/span><\/p>\n Now, it should be noted that Odysseus\u2019 problems are mostly his own fault. If he hadn\u2019t gotten cocky when he tricked the Cyclops, he might have made it home sooner. Perhaps that\u2019s another lesson on uncertainty from The <\/em><\/span>Odyssey<\/span><\/i>: beware of hubris.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019re going to be okay, arent we Papa? <\/span><\/p>\n Yes. We are.<\/span><\/p>\n And nothing bad is going to happen to us.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s right. Because we\u2019re carrying the fire.<\/span><\/p>\n Yes. Because we\u2019re carrying the fire.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In <\/span>The Road<\/span><\/i> an unnamed man and his son pilgrimage across a post-apocalyptic landscape, trying to find food, stay alive, and avoid capture by savage tribes of baby-eating barbarians. The father is sick and dying. He knows he won\u2019t be around much longer. So he teaches his son skills he\u2019ll need to survive. Most importantly, he teaches his son to \u201ccarry the fire.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Carrying the fire is a metaphor for living life nobly, even in the face of depravity.<\/span><\/a> The Road<\/span><\/i> is a reminder that even when the old rules have vanished, evil is on the march, and chaos reigns, we can still choose to be good. We can still keep up our standards. We can still make the right decisions. <\/span><\/p>\n I read this book once a year. It\u2019s become my modern-day Greek-tragedy-esque ritual of catharsis. <\/span><\/p>\n Check out my podcast with McCarthy expert Steven Frye<\/strong><\/a> for more insights on The Road<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n If you\u2019ve been following AoM long enough, you know that <\/span>Lonesome Dove<\/span><\/i> is my all-time favorite novel. I\u2019ve read it five times and even named my son after one of the main protagonists, Augustus McCrae. <\/span><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until about the third time reading Larry McMurtry\u2019s 800+ page Western epic that I understood what kept me coming back to the book: It\u2019s all about human beings trying to figure out what to do when they don\u2019t know what to do. Like the Greek tragedies, <\/span>Lonesome Dove<\/span><\/i> is about encountering uncertainty. <\/span><\/p>\n One of the main characters, Woodrow Call, ponders the futility of plotting out the future after his crew experiences an early setback in their cattle drive from Southern Texas to Montana:<\/span><\/p>\n Though he had always been a careful planner, life on the frontier had long ago convinced him of the fragility of plans. The truth was, most plans did fail, to one degree or another, for one reason or another. He had survived as a Ranger because he was quick to respond to what he had actually found, not because his planning was infallible.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Surviving in a world of uncertainty requires you to adapt to the situation you find yourself in, rather than holding tightly to a vision of the world as you expected it to be. Woodrow understood you had to update your mental models<\/a> if you wanted to make it in the unpredictable West. <\/span><\/p>\n And like the Greek tragedies and the <\/span>Gita<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Lonesome Dove<\/span><\/i> teaches that even if you don\u2019t know what to do, sometimes the only thing you can do is to keep moving forward. This is conveyed poignantly in a scene in which an Irish boy who\u2019s joined the drive crosses a river and stirs up a swarm of water moccasins that kill him:<\/span><\/p>\n Call knelt by the boy, helpless to do one thing for him. It was the worst luck — to come all the way from Ireland and then ride into a swarm of water moccasins. <\/span><\/p>\n Call said nothing. The boy\u2019s age had nothing to do with what had happened, of course; even an experienced man, riding into such a mess of snakes, wouldn\u2019t have survived. He himself might not have, and he had never worried about snakes. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate. Allen O\u2019Brien should waste no time on guilt, for a boy could die in Ireland as readily as elsewhere, however safe it might appear.<\/span><\/p>\n ‘It seems too quick,’ he said. ‘It seems very quick, just to ride off and leave the boy. He was the babe of our family,’ he added. <\/span><\/p>\nIncerto<\/i><\/a> by Nassim Taleb<\/h3>\n
![\""Incerto"](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/incerto.jpg\")
Radical Uncertainty<\/i><\/a> by John Kay and Mervyn King<\/h3>\n
![\"Book](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/un.jpg\")
<\/p>\nScience, Strategy, and War<\/i><\/a> by Frans P.B. Osinga<\/h3>\n
![\"Book](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/un2.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMeditations<\/i><\/a> by Marcus Aurelius<\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/un4.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGreek Tragedies<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/plays.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Baghavad Gita<\/i><\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/bag.jpg\")
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\n<\/span>My mouth is parched,
\n<\/span>My body trembles,
\n<\/span>The hair bristles on my flesh.
\n<\/span>The magic bow slips
\n<\/span>From my hand,
\n<\/span>my skin burns,
\n<\/span>I cannot stand still,
\n<\/span>My mind reels.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nBook of Job<\/a><\/h3>\n
The Odyssey<\/i><\/a><\/i> by Homer<\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/od.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Road<\/i><\/a> by Cormac McCarthy<\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/road.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLonesome Dove<\/i><\/a> by Larry McMurtry<\/h3>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/content.artofmanliness.com\/uploads\/2020\/04\/dove.jpg\")
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