Introduction
A black swan event is a rare, unpredictable catastrophe defined by three key traits: its extreme rarity (so unlikely that the risk is unknown beforehand), its massive, destructive impact, and the way people later act as if it were obvious. The term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book "The Black Swan: The Impact Of The Highly Improbable."
The easiest black swans
to grasp are sudden pandemics and alien invasions. But the
majority of black
swans we ought to fear are self-inflicted multi-factor crises. Confused? No problem, black
chickens come to our doom aid.
In contrast to a black swan, which unexpectedly (but majestically) lands on your roof and makes it collapse, thus killing you and your cat, black chickens live on your lawn. You see most of the flock each morning, scratching and pecking and clucking conspiratorially. I say "most of the flock" because some actually live behind your eyes, and although you are aware of some of those, you can't see them as black chickens.
One day, while you are out collecting apples from a tree, a black chicken that was squatting on a low branch jumps onto your hat and starts flapping and pecking at your face. The hat now covers your eyes, and unable to see where you are going, you trample on a group of black chickens that happened to be conveniently nearby.
You fall to the ground, and now the rest of the chickens reach you,
each carrying a sharpened sheet of paper that they stole from the tray
of your inkjet printer, and they use those sheets to inflict a
thousand cuts on you until you bleed to your death. They use
your blood to write the name of their gang flock on the ground:
"the black swan," after which they take to the skies, fly above
the atmosphere of our ruined planet, and begin their interstellar
journey in search of the next civilization to doom.
Disclaimer
The author is not materially affiliated with black chickens—they do not give him eggs. However, the author derives inspiration from the coop to write all of his books, some of which you can buy already.
The black chickens you know
After the introduction above, it only takes a small amount of imagination to identify some of the black chickens living on our collective lawn:
- Environmental degradation.
- Inequality and capital concentration.
- Political cynicism.
- Cultural degradation.
- Demographic collapse.
- The rise of AI.
There are more, plus the black chickens that live behind our eyes, which are so damning that even the author folds to popular wisdom and only allegorically refers to them in long-form works of fiction that most people won't read.
It can't be understated that the fowl work coordinately for a long time to achieve their goals.
For example, the black chicken of capital concentration made
big-budget movies possible. In an effort to recoop recoup the
invested capital, the movies are bland, politically neutered, and
scientifically illiterate, all of which the black chicken of
cultural degradation endorses with an enthusiastic flapping of wings.
The author has more examples of black chickens working together, and you probably can come up with your own, but this page is long enough already, and the black chick of shortened attention spans is clucking threateningly. But, in due time, the author will dare to write more about what troubles him. Follow him on social media and/or subscribe to the RSS feed.
In a different order of news, you may want to check out what type of devil is the Birretuda.