Harry "Breaker" Morant, an Australian-born horseman, soldier and poet, was executed in South Africa in 1902 for alleged war crimes committed during the Second Boer War. His famous (and awesome) last words were "shoot straight you bastards. Don't make a mess of it." Since that time, ol' Harry "The Breaker" has become something of a folk hero in Australia, partly, no doubt, for his cool, debonair recalcitrance in the gravest of circumstances.
That the Aussies have accorded first-rate status to a criminal like Harry is perhaps not surprising, given how much their culture esteems moxy like his, a passion that is conspicuously betrayed in their cult of Cygnus Atratus (i.e., the black swan), an even more prominent figure in Australian culture and lore than he. This anomalous creature is on the flag and coat of arms of Western Australia, and has for a long time been the embodiment of the antipodean spirit in Australia. It is a bird that is at once rare, exceptional, and problematical, throwing a wrench, as it did, in our plans to continue calling swans necessarily white birds.
But that conception of black swans is not unique to Australia. It exists here, if in a significantly more diffuse and abstract form. Many of us know that to figuratively behold a black swan means to confront something wholly unexpected and unique, something that inconveniently challenges our beliefs and assumptions.
This understanding has penetrated the global pop culture ether, and naturally plays a prominent role in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, in which Nina's antagonist - her black swan - is the exotically unpredictable Lily. Lily destabilizes Nina's perceptions of many things, and threatens to take many things from her including her most central fixation: dance. Seemingly in an instant, Nina's world collapses. But Lily does not serve solely destructive purposes; she also represents a potent, albeit utterly unanticipated and unwanted, force for change in Nina. These two facets of the relationship between Lily and Nina echo the bipolar opportunities that metaphorical black swans represent; always destructive, but often eventually constructive.
We can even get a little more concrete here and take a formal approach to understanding what the heck is going on with Nina. There is a theory, conveniently dubbed Black Swan Theory (or, the Theory of Black Swan Events; Taleb, 2007), which sheds light on the impact that unpredictable and rare black swan events (examples of which include the Internet revolution, World War I, and September 11th) have in our lives.
Black Swan Theory is easy enough to understand; in a nutshell, it is this: Despite their relative rarity, events that are impossible to predict play a disproportionately large role compared to predictable events in shaping world history (as well as the personal histories of individual people like Nina). Despite this fact, people generally discount the tremendous causal impact of these unpredictable events after the fact, claiming in hindsight that such events were predictable after all, in fact they were expected. This hindsight bias makes us believe that the world is more predictable than it is in reality, blinding us to the potential for future black swan events.
Why does this happen? Because it is always comforting (and often useful, in fact) to believe that the world is a safe, predictable place. It feels good to be overly optimistic and to feel in control of one's destiny, and that everyone else is in control of his or her destiny. That if I do a,b, and c then x,y, and z will result. But if we take this comforting and illusory form of thinking overboard by under-representing uncertainty in our efforts to predict the future, we leave ourselves vulnerable to the jarring peck of the black swan.
How can we cope with black swan events? The key is not to try to predict them because by definition they are not susceptible to that. We can, however, guard against them by basically being more cautious. Don't allow corporations or industries to get so big that they are "too big to fail." Back up your files. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. For Nina, the key would be to engage in an assortment of professional and leisurely pursuits in addition to dancing.
The bottom line is that unless you're willing to risk a black swan smackdown, you must refrain from harboring undue confidence in your ability to predict how things will go. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, as it were. This requires a balanced approach tempered by reasonably conservative and tentative decisions. That should help you avoid the unforeseen hazards that are undoubtedly in your future, like firing squads.
Ted Cascio is co-editor of House & Psychology (John Wiley & Sons).
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