On Being Clairvoyant.

Zach Walker

“Evolve or die”

“This evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies, economies—for everything. And it is naturally self-correcting as a whole, though not necessarily for its parts”

The above 3 quotes are part of Ray Dalio’s principles for life.

While his proclamation is loud and thought-provoking especially as they are carrying the weight of his person. (He has been called the Steve Jobs of investing. He manages the largest hedge fund in the world; BridgeWaters. Plus he wrote one of the most transformational books I have ever read, Principles: Life and Work. When some people speak we tend to want to listen), it’s in fact not that groundbreaking. I say this because the concept of evolution is as old as humanity itself. 

This goes back to what I keep saying about the laws and principles that govern humanity and life being consistent. It might be rebranded, show up in different forms but the underlying principle or concept is always consistent.

Let's take the concept of evolution for example in the light of the Ray Dalio “rehashment”. The fact that we are all here today is because of evolution.

If anyone slept through biology class here is a brief recap. Do you remember the guy Charles Darwin? He discovered evolution and its premise is based on the theory of natural selection( and extinction). 

The first thing you need to understand is this, humanity needs to keep going on no matter what. In order for this to happen, it needs to figure out a way to do this and its method of choice according to Darwin is by natural selection. 

This means that only the traits or qualities that will ensure that a generation keeps going are “selected”.

So at every point in time, only those “survival” traits naturally remain. While others get dropped off. “For example, slow zebras are the ones who are eaten by the lions. The faster ones survive and reproduce. Over time, the entire zebra population becomes faster. ”(Excerpt From The Great Mental Models Volume 2 by Shane Parrish)

“Natural selection … is an incredibly simple process requiring just three simple elements—variation between individuals, environmental conditions that favour or select certain variants over others, and a means to reproduce those variants that are better suited to the environment.” Rafe Sagarin.

Note that environments change ( look at the world now vs 10 years ago) hence the need for adaptability. 

“Organisms in nature have survived and thrived for billions of years because they have one powerful trait at their disposal—they are adaptive.” Rafe Sagarin

Another factor necessary for evolution in addition to being adaptable is resilience. Adaptability doesn’t automatically guarantee resilience. Check out another excerpt from The Great Mental Models Volume 2 by Shane Parrish ( get this book by the way. Sooooo worth it for your brain’s evolution loll)

 “While the best-adapted organisms may be the strongest during normal conditions, they may struggle to survive volatility. Generalist species are far more resilient than specialists. A rat or a cockroach can survive almost anywhere, a panda less so.”

Essentially evolution is how man interacts with his “environment”.  It’s man vs environment. Completely zero-sum/ squid game type setup. 

Both on a personal and a business or global level your only chance of not being “eaten alive”, overrun by the more adaptable, or becoming a museum relic where kids go to see how things used to be? is evolution. It is the only way. 

The demise of companies like Xerox or Kodak are easy examples that we can point to for not having evolved but it’s also on a micro-level(personal).

How aware of where the world is headed?. How up to date are your skills?. How fluent are you in the “language” of the times( I don’t mean English, French or Mandarin, I mean are you curious about all the talk about meta, crypto, NFTs etc just to understand how it affects you or how you should be making decisions). How nimble are you? How open-minded? How curious?

Someone was telling me that her 72-year-old mum is a Facebook native. She is constantly interacting with young people and recently declared that she didn’t mind being called by her name sans ma or aunty. As a Nigerian “elder” this is a big deal because we are sooooooo big on respect. She is completely evolved in her mindset on age and ageism. Anyway, her wishes are completely overruled because no well trained Nigerian will dare call an older person by his or her name. We have been conditioned. 

More on evolved parents and social media, my dad at some point took to Facebook to wish his children a happy birthday and then forgets to call. I quickly told him that that is completely unacceptable for me. He still sometimes calls a day late but no more Facebook wishes. 

Moving on. Going by all these, anyone that carefully looks back at past trends and is aware of what is going on can basically predict the future. But it’s discerning. The thinking. The observant. That will reap the benefit of this.

If you are ready to do that work you could basically start a side hustle of telling the future. All you need is a spooky/ intelligent-sounding name and a crystal ball(this will be strictly for effects) and you are in business baby.

“Because humans are capable of conscious, memory-based learning, we can evolve further and faster than any other species, changing not just across generations but within our own lifetimes.” Ray Dalio 

To end, 3 things to note/questions to start asking:

1. How adaptable are you?

2. How resilient are you?

3. How “useful” are you now and how “useful” will you be in the future?

Keep going,

Ije