I've started reading
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb. Not that I'm adequately impressed by him, but a lot of his points make partial sense, and support / clarify some of my earlier musings on our field. Earlier I had read The Organic Farming Reader (which I believe, is a must read for landscape professionals), and one essay / narrative focussed on 19th century traditional farming systems in the Mahanadi delta. There were no dams / checkdams on the Mahanadi then, and the farmers couldn't be sure when it would flood or be deficit. So, they resorted to multiple cropping, and multiple options - in the sense that they did sow the regular seeds during monsoon, but if their fields flooded, they quickly changed the seeds to account for the accumulated silt & flooding. They were not banking on a particular crop and thus, could be sure of obtaining optimal yield inspite of natural aberrations. Nassim Taleb talks of such Black Swan events (most swans are white, a black swan is an oddity / rarity) that more or less govern society / life on earth, and have a much larger impact than the normal & accountable / predictable events. No one can anticipate these events, but can create optimal options for each pattern. As some wisecrack said:
"Uncertainty is the greatest certainty of life."
Coming back to our field, and applying this hypothesis, we are highly dependent on natural factors for planting, site development, etc. However, we provide precision planting strategies, site development options. One of the most intriguing exercises we had done (if you guys remember) was a farmhouse in Baroda, where the lower portion could be flooded in one or the other monsoon. We had to deal with multiple uncertainties, and while we didn't have enough time to devout to the exercise, it brought out better strategies than other exercises - for eg. MSU project. However, the point being that even in MSU project, we cannot predict an exceptionally harsh summer with a high water deficit, leading to large scale failure of our planting / site development strategies.
Again, the above paragraph is just one type of example... How about applying it to other facets of field: management, construction, contractors, etc etc.... Maybe established firms have those systems in place - conscious or unconscious, but embedding these in all our exercises would probably provide more sustainable and liveable solutions....
I look forward to a lot of criticism :D
