Prepared, Not Afraid

Because the world doesn't always play fair

The world is not a fairy tale. It doesn't reward virtue by default or punish vice on cue. To assume otherwise—to trust that others always act justly, that systems will self-correct, or that good intentions suffice—is to court disaster. Resilience lies not just in optimism, but also in preparation. This is the lesson of diversification in finance, and a lesson of history: we must brace ourselves for the possibility that others won’t play by the rules.

In the area of financial investments, genuine wisdom and foresight can make you a fortune. Today, anyone can access knowledge that would have made them a billionaire—if only they’d known it years, or even months, earlier. Yet the most enduring form of wisdom in investing is to diversify:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket."

In other words, don't expose yourself to the risk of ruin just because you feel like you might be right. Don’t overestimate the accuracy of your predictions, or how well you think you understand the world. Even the most seasoned investors don’t get everything right. Finance is where real money is on the line, and people are, in theory, least likely to act against their better judgment. But given the stakes, financial markets are also a space where the collective wisdom and folly of human nature is on full display. Isaac Newton, who lost much of his fortune in the 1720 South Sea Bubble, famously remarked:

"I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men."

Being surprised by others’ irrationality is a failure of common sense. Anyone who fancies themselves a genius and makes reckless bets risks being humbled by the market. We simply don't understand as much as we think we do. Some win big through luck, just as some people win the lottery. But repeated reckless bets usually lead to ruin. The advice to diversify and guard against uncertainty therefore remains sound. This is not just an investment strategy. It’s a mindset that accepts uncertainty, acknowledges our limitations, and avoids staking everything on the belief that we are absolutely right.

Financial markets are a microcosm of life: unpredictable, driven by luck, and often unforgiving of overconfidence. The wisdom of diversification and minimising the risk of ruin isn’t just for portfolios, it’s a way of thinking about risk, resilience, and the fragility of moral order.

This is why we encode warnings in the stories we tell children. Cinderella and Snow White teach us to be wary of stepparents. Little Red Riding Hood warns us about strangers. The Boy Who Cried Wolf teaches us not to lie. Humpty Dumpty reminds us that some things cannot be undone:

“All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.”

These moral lessons were taught in simple stories concealing hard truths. But childhood also gave us stories of heroes and villains, of good triumphing over evil, and of the comforting illusion of moral gravity. Good things happen to good people. Evildoers are punished. The hero wins at the end of the day and lives happily ever after.

In The Sound of Music, Maria, contemplating the love of Captain von Trapp, sings:

“So somewhere in my youth
Or childhood
I must have done something good”

We cling to the comforting idea that the world is fair—that if we do what’s right, things will work out. But eventually, reality collides with our expectations. The good side doesn't always win. Villains don’t wear cloaks. And justice, if it arrives at all, limps in far too late.

To avoid this dissonance, many cling to the belief that respectable mainstream society is fundamentally good and that evildoers are fringe outliers. But that comfort can blind us to evil when it wears a respectable mask.

One such moment of blindness happened during the Holocaust. In 1944, the Hungarian author Arthur Koestler wrote in the New York Times about how the Americans around him were indifferent to genocide:

"There is a dream which keeps coming back to me... I scream for help but nobody hears me, the crowd walks past laughing and chatting."

He had photographs, reports, firsthand testimony from the concentration camps. But still:

"Nine out of ten average American citizens, when asked whether they believed that the Nazis commit atrocities, answered that it was all propaganda lies, and that they didn’t believe a word of it."

The first Holocaust deniers weren’t fringe radicals. They were ordinary people who looked away.

So where, then, do our moral certainties come from? Often, from narratives written by the powerful. Those with interests justify their actions and suppress dissent. Few see themselves as evil. Fewer still stop when they have the power to continue imposing their will and advancing their interests.

During the era of colonialism, Britain framed its extraction of the wealth of India as an altruistic mission to civilise its colonial subjects. The Indian Subcontinent was the "Crown Jewel" of the Empire, and many British families proudly encouraged their sons to support the colonial enterprise. Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness conveys this veneer:

"Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires."

History is not a moral ledger. It's a story told by those who wrote it. The folk song One Tin Soldier echoes this warning, exposing the hypocrisy of those who, by virtue of their power, justify inflicting harm in the name of righteousness:

“Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven, you can justify it in the end”

During World War II, Japan's Unit 731 committed grotesque biological experiments on Chinese civilians. A witness said that some experiments were driven not by scientific need, but by “professional curiosity." After the war, the U.S. granted these scientists immunity in exchange for their findings.

These atrocities weren’t just moral failures. The perpetrators possessed overwhelming power; the victims couldn’t resist, and those who could have intervened or served justice chose not to. Interests triumphed over ideals.

Even today, this dynamic persists. British museums retain artefacts taken from other nations during the age of empire, whether through colonisation, coercion, or unequal treaties. After condemning Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in 2018, the U.S. resumed arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Morality is often a posture, not a policy, when interests are at stake.

In other cases, justice is served, but slowly, painfully, and never fully. In Australia, victims of thalidomide—a morning sickness drug that caused birth defects in the 1950s—didn’t receive compensation until the 2010s. Forty percent of infants born to mothers who took thalidomide died near birth. Survivors lived with profound disability, and their families bore the emotional and physical toll for decades.

Justice came, but not swiftly. Not simply. And never completely.

But good intentions alone don’t prevent catastrophe either. The Bolsheviks sought liberation and produced mass paranoia and gulags. The U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 to spread democracy but left behind devastation and a power vacuum. As Solzhenitsyn wrote:

"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he is doing is good."

Ideals matter. But ideals must be backed by strength and pragmatism. Moral progress limps. It must be dragged across the finish line by those prepared to bear its weight. This doesn't mean abandoning principles in favor of brute force, nor does it justify becoming what we oppose.

The most effective approaches often combine moral clarity with strategic foresight—holding onto our values while recognising that goodwill alone rarely suffices. Even non-violent resistance, when successful, is never entirely passive. Movements such as those led by Gandhi or Mandela relied on mass coordination, economic leverage, public pressure, and moral legitimacy—forms of power that required as much discipline and strategy as any military campaign. They remind us that power and principle aren’t inherently at odds, but must consciously be brought into alignment.

Yet that alignment requires constant vigilance. Power, even when pursued for noble ends, can distort the very ideals it was meant to uphold. History shows that strength without moral restraint often drifts toward abuse and overreach. The danger lies not only in external enemies but in the slow erosion of our moral judgment. Without ideals to orient us, the strength intended to defend what’s right can warp the very compass we rely on to remain principled. The price of peace is preparation, and the price of preparation is restraint.

A runaway roll of steel is massive, mindless, and lethal. It doesn’t hate you. It doesn’t think. But it will crush you all the same if you stand in its way. That’s how force can behave: amoral, indiscriminate, and without conscience.

Fire helped early tribes cook and survive, but it could just as easily be used to destroy. Agriculture brought the appearance of stability and abundance, but it also sparked competition for control over land. Industrialisation brought modern medicine and education, but also the machinery of mass slaughter. The same tools that build can also destroy. What matters is not just who holds power, but whether they are guided by wisdom and restraint in wielding it. Like a runaway steel roll, potent technologies have no mind and no conscience. They simply magnify our intentions, for better or worse.

We don’t leave our doors unlocked just because the neighbourhood feels safe. We don’t ride without a seatbelt just because we trust the driver. We prepare not because we expect disaster, but because we’re not naive.

Some people only respect hard power. As the Navy SEAL officer William McRaven put it:

"If a shark begins to circle your position, stand your ground... punch him in the snout, and he will turn and swim away."

Strength isn’t about aggression. It’s about being ready for when things don’t go to plan. As the Japanese proverb goes:

"It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."

But the warrior must also tend his garden, lest he forget what he was meant to protect.

Peace is not kept by pleading with power, but by possessing it—not to coerce and dominate, but to uphold what is right. That is what strength is for.