Philosophers often like to talk about “emergence,” a process where various discrete items come together to form something entirely new. It’s when a new property, a new object, or a new perspective emerges from the sum of the parts. We often talk differently about the emergent property than the individual elements. For example, we talk about a traffic jam differently than the cars that make it up.
One key question is: To what extent should we view society as an emergent property? In some ways, “society” has its own flow. It can create money, make laws, and shape collective behavior. When people compare a state’s budget to a household, it’s disingenuous — the state is not a parent with a credit card. Talking about society is often different from talking about individuals.
In this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, I spoke with the bestselling author and neo-Stoic Ryan Holiday about his new book, Wisdom Takes Work. We discussed a curious fact: We expect different things from our government agencies than we do from financial institutions. We demand more from our politicians than CEOs, and we talk about “government” differently than almost anything else.
And that’s not always a good thing.
Those who scorn mistakes
In his new book, Holiday notes that “wisdom” is not something you are born with, but that you work to develop. The book is about the myriad ways to do just that, but one of the key, unavoidable ingredients to wisdom is failure.
We all know that life involves failure. We know that wisdom is something you earn through a lifetime of flops, misses, and cock-ups. You will have tried to do something this week and have failed. I will have written this article five or ten times before my editor said, “Okay, let’s run it.” If you meet someone who says they’ve never failed, it means they’ve never tried to do something new, difficult, or outside their comfort zone. And that means they cannot be wise.
In our interview, Holiday pointed out that, while we accept this is true on a local, individual level, we have a strange tendency to forget it when it comes to politicians or on a governmental level. We want everything to be done perfectly, quickly, and the first time. We are intolerant of failure, scornful of mistakes, and pillory those who admit they were wrong.
“We’re really hard on people who change their mind about things,” Holiday said. “And then we wonder why politicians don’t admit they were wrong very often or continue to pursue policies that are obviously not working. You should want people to change their minds. You should want people to admit they’re wrong. But when you make that a hard landing, people are less likely to do it.
We as a society face a number of really complicated, complex problems. And not only is it unlikely that there’s any perfect solution to those problems, but the idea that we’re going to solve them on the first attempt is unrealistic at best. So yeah, we’ve got to get better at trying things, experimenting, and accepting failure.”
Failing to launch or failing to try
To illustrate his point, Holiday focused on the difference between SpaceX and NASA space programs. For decades, NASA has been the leading light in space exploration and technology. It had more money, more ideas, and more innovation. Then, in the early 2000s, SpaceX started to take over. SpaceX slashed launch costs from NASA’s Space Shuttle era — around $18,500 per kilogram — to under $3,000 with its Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX was the first to develop reusable rocket technology, a concept NASA had long set aside, and the company now outpaces NASA in annual launch frequency. Its development of the Starship craft with the explicit goal of Mars colonization showcases just how interplanetary its ambitions are.
According to Holiday, this is because of a difference in how we allow failure in our state institutions vs. financial ones. “If you have a NASA rocket that blows up on the launch pad, that’s a political problem,” Holiday said. “If Elon Musk has a rocket that blows up on the launch pad, he has a financial problem. And those are different kinds of problems — and one is much easier to deal with than the other. You had a risk-averse culture versus a risk-taking culture…That’s why SpaceX was able to pull off incredible feats of engineering and innovation.”
How to bring Stoicism back into politics
In our conversation, I asked Holiday why Stoics often ended up in positions of power, wealth, or responsibility. It was true in the ancient world, and it’s true today — Bill Clinton, Tom Brady, Tim Ferriss, and Naval Ravikant have all said they respect and follow Stoic ideas.
“I do think there is something in Stoicism,” Holiday said. “And it isn’t supposed to be your sole pursuit. The idea for the Stoics was this philosophy should inform whatever it is that you’re doing, whether you’re a blacksmith or a cobbler or a general or a governor or an emperor.”
Two of the most important Stoic values for innovation and success are, first, a willingness to get involved. A Stoic will roll up their sleeves, take a deep breath, and give it a go. Second, an acceptance that failure is both inevitable and necessary. Failure is how we get better. The obstacle is the way. And so, if we live in a world where giving it a go is mocked as cringe, or where effort is seen as busybodying, then people will stop trying. If we live in a world where failure is laughed at, or politicians who get it wrong instantly lose their jobs, then government will not become wise.
If wisdom is about failure, what happens when we disallow failure? We live in a world governed without wisdom.
This article To become wiser, society must relearn how to fail is featured on Big Think.
