It seems like everyone knows what a Black Swan is by now. The jury is still out on Grey Swans. Black Swans are unpredictable, unthinkable high impact events. The most useful Grey Swan definition, I think, also involves unthinkable high impact events, but unlike Black Swans, Grey Swan events are highly predictable. We can now see that Covid-19 falls into this Grey Swan category. Everyone in a position of power knew that it was only a matter of time before the world would experience a pandemic, and almost all decided to bury their heads, ostrich-like, in the sand and hope it wouldn’t happen on their watch.
These kinds of unthinkable event are supposed to serve as a reminder that not-thinking about something because it sounds bad is not such a smart life strategy. From where I sit, I don’t think many people have taken the Covid-triggered hint. So, let’s try pushing the idea a little further: thinking about predictable-but-unthinkable events doesn’t just save lives, it makes society as a whole more resilient. And, if you’re that way inclined, it also highlights future innovation hot-spots.
Here, according to our research, are the current predictable-but-unthinkable Grey Swan Top Five. In something like ascending order of hot-spot-creation potential:
#5 Suffocated Generation Z – one being predicted as long ago as the mid-1990s in the Strauss & Howe Generations model. Over-protect kids and they’ll grow up to be fragile adults with few life skills. And therefore limited ability to thrive in a chaotic world. Locking kids down for a significant proportion of their childhood turns out to be the best over-protection mechanism ever invented. And the global chaos half of the story isn’t going away anytime soon. The oldest GenZ’s are now looking to enter the workplace. Ideally in a job that can be done over Zoom while sitting in a domestic cocoon. Following an interview they attended alongside their parents. When it comes to this ‘Artist’ generation’s inevitable turn to take over the reigns of power, things won’t go well. The standard of movies on the other hand will rise considerably. So it’s not all bad, I guess.
#4 Biomass Power Stations – becoming an iconic example not just of greenwashing, but how to sound like a sustainable solution when in reality you’re making the problem you purport to fix several times worse than it would have been if you did nothing. The second Law of Thermodynamics tells us there’s no such thing as a free ride. It doesn’t always tell us just how much collateral damage doing dumb things can do.
#3 Social Media Kills Democracy – Turns out that the innocent, sort-of well-intentioned act of personalising a person’s newsfeeds and recommendations doesn’t end up producing a world in which everyone is joyfully connected to everyone else. Instead what we end up with is a billion-and-one echo-chambers and a population that, as every day goes by, becomes less and less able to get along with people who’s opinions are slightly different to their own. How Mark Zuckerberg sleeps at night, I have no idea.
#2 Lying Populist Politicians – one of the lessons of Covid was supposed to be that anytime there’s a fight between a real virus and fake news, reality wins. The other thing that’s supposed to happen is that by making the world more transparent, anyone in public office is supposed to realise they can’t hide their shady-dealings anymore. Unfortunately, in the UK at least, the appalling performance of the Government – the polar opposite of a King Midas administration – has only served to reinforce the idea that those in power can say literally anything and get away with it. Couple that with opposition parties that still naively think revealing nitpicking truths is a vote winner, and its only a matter of time before a truth-less slippery slope turns into a cliff edge. Walk this way, confirmation-bias lemmings.
#1 The Fertility Timebomb – the greyest of the Grey Swans. The story that literally no-one wants to contemplate. Spray the planet with oestrogenic pesticides for a few decades and, surprise, surprise, it starts to play havoc with the reproductive systems of every lifeform. You start looking in to this one – starting with ‘The Feminisation of Nature’, a first warning shot published in 1997 – then look around at the myriad already visible manifestations and get so scared, you can see why Wilful Blindness is sometimes the only sensible way of maintaining our ability to function.
Finally, if your own wilful blindness gene hasn’t kicked in yet, #0 on the Top Five Grey Swan list is what happens when any of the five combines with any of the others. That’s when the contradictions really start to become visible. Inside every Grey Swan is an opportunity. Between every pair of Grey Swans is where the opportunities become exponential.
Happy days.