Cultural Capital
How to antifragile it! - Part 1
Culture gets touted as the mother of all miracle weapons. While it certainly is an important part, it is not the solution to all problems. So, today we will explore what specifically is part of a family’s cultural capital and what you can do to grow it. And once you have this growth, how to make it antifragile?
First, we need to define what a family culture is. In general, we can also call it a family tradition. The rules, behaviours, values, beliefs and ideals a family adheres to. Or in the words of Ernest W. Burgess, Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago:
“Whatever its biological inheritance from its parents and other ancestors, the child receives also from them a heritage of attitudes, sentiments, and ideals which may be termed the family tradition, or the family culture.” — Ernest W. Burgess
In successful families, the cultural capital is often built up over generations. Many families are highly successful in this capital, even if they do not have a lot of financial wealth. There are also many families with a terrible culture, yet they have a lot of financial capital. The cultural capital of a family is highly important if we look at Hugh’s definition of wealth as well-being.
This brings me to the next point: What is the goal of antifragility? What are we trying to achieve by this? Improving from hardship and shocks together, yes, but why? With antifragility, we are trying to guarantee long-lasting well-being for the family and its members. That is the ultimate goal behind it. And the families that manage this well over many generations have, for one part, excelled in their cultural capital.
“When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.” — Billy Graham
the words of Billy Graham strike home. And they are uttered in truth. So, with the premise that a strong family culture builds an antifragile character, let’s begin to look at the how. How can we ensure that such a family culture is put in place? In this regard, we can learn a lot from religious or indigenous communities and from long-standing families. Particularly aristocratic families often have long histories of family tradition. Now to be clear, be it aristocratic families, or religious communities or indigenous communities, I do not suggest you copy them one on one. In my opinion, they all have strong parts and weaknesses in their traditions. We want to pick up the good parts and try to leave out the bad parts.
Before we carry on, I want to stress one important piece. A family tradition is never set in stone. It is a breathing thing, that can develop over time and should do so. Sometimes, it does for the worse, but the goal is to constantly adjust the tradition to still be workable in the current environment that a family finds itself in. Which type of culture will be successful? This is a variable depending on many factors, such as the geopolitical climate, the social norms you operate in, the economic system you need to operate in and so on. Some family cultures reaped great results for centuries but were catastrophic after a systemic change happened. This is, for example, the case for many aristocratic families, that did not adapt to how the political, social and economic system has changed.
Bringing this back to the goal. We know WHAT we want to achieve (antifragility in the cultural capital). We have defined the goal (long-lasting well-being of family members), so we know WHY we want to achieve this. Now, all that is missing is HOW we achieve this. The HOW is the most difficult part.
So how can we put together “a heritage of attitudes, sentiments, and ideals” that can ensure that the family is antifragile? The first step is to think about how the family can become resilient. We want to get from fragile to resilient before we can get to antifragile. Withstanding shocks, so being able to come back to the initial state after a shock is the basis. To become antifragile, we can improve on top and tweak what has worked for resilience. Athletes and special units are at the human top in terms of antifragility. They need to improve constantly and through hardship and training, so applying shocks they get there. This applies to both individuals as to teams. Some say that a team is only as strong as the weakest person. However, every person on a team has different skills and talents. So I remember in rugby we had the mantra that if the person next to you makes a mistake, it is your job to fix it and help. Right, left, behind and in front of you.
So, which Attitudes are crucial for athletes and soldiers?
Grit
Perseverance
Growth mindset
Ownership
Long-Term thinking
Risk tolerance
Physical well-being
Mental well-being
Learning mindset
Problem-solving
Self-discipline
Which Ideals are crucial?
Trust
Team mindset
Psychological safety
Lean Talk - effective communication
Clarity
Efficient decision making
Agility - Decentralised decision making
Balance between collectivism and individualism
And the third part is the Sentiments:
Love for each other
Respect for each other
Honesty toward each other
If you look at the above, it is easily seen that these can apply to a family just as much as to a sports team or a special unit as the Navy Seals. You would think that high-performing teams are based on talent. You cannot be further from the truth. High-performing teams work hard, trust each other and do not give up. If we had to boil it down to three key points. The same applies to a family. And if you look at religious and indigenous communities, these are their main pillers too. The list is not exhaustive, and your family or family members will most likely not all adhere to each and every point. The beauty of a team (family) is that we can help each other. Some of us might be highly disciplined, but lack creativity. Another family member might be highly creative but struggle in other areas. We need these individual strengths and differences in order to perform well as a collective.
On the other hand. We should also have a look at what makes a family fragile. One of the biggest issues is financial capital. This is often a point where we can find weakness for families. Often, the financial capital is the only reason a family stays together, which by itself is not the best reason. Of course, this implies that cultural capital is lacking. The Max-Planck Institute conducted a study on the effects of wealth on family cohesion. It was either a strong social glue or a social disruptor. In the study they managed to pinpoint the reason for this. If the family wealth was used as a means to form competition between family members, it weakened family cohesion. If it was used to foster democratic ideals in the family, it improved family cohesion.
What makes a family fragile?
Distrust
Lacking communication
Strict hierarchies
Entitlement
Toxic competition
No time with each other
Neglect of physical and emotional well-being
Overly collective or individualistic cultures
Lack of discipline
Forcing people to stay together
Picking up on the last point in the list above, I feel that this is the right point for some final words of this week’s piece: Not every family is meant to stay together. And not everyone is meant to like each other. Do not make the mistake of forcing your family into working together. It makes sense to have a split every few generations, and it makes sense to let people go if they wish so. We might not be able to choose our family, however, we can choose to stay or not. And this choice is important, by not permitting the choice, you might make things worse. It might feel like the right move, thinking that if people do not have a choice, they might try harder. In my experience, if not given a choice, most will revert to not trying at all.
This piece might have left a lot of questions. Fret not, we shall go about answering them in the next few weeks. Feel free to drop questions in the comment section for me to look at in the future.