Risk appetite is a familiar idea for financial investors. The idea and I are about the same age, born at the midpoint of the previous century.
The idea is commonsensical: the riskier your investment, the greater the possibility of either gain or loss. A professor named Harry Markowitz won a Nobel prize for quantifying risk. Before investing money, a financial advisor will assess your risk appetite. Averse, Minimal, Cautious, Open, Hungry are boxes to check.
This is a metaphor.
Some people are born risk-averse, others risk-famished. Risk categories include financial, professional, emotional, physical, social, existential. Most of us welcome risks in some aspects of our lives and eschew it elsewhere. I have been a professional and existential risk-taker, and elsewhere timid.
Risk-appetite measures not courage but dissatisfaction. We venture from safety when safety stifles. Folks happy in their cells remain there. We’ve all read about paroled prisoners who refused to leave jail. Courage is doing what you dread but believe you ought; risk-seekers are doing what they prefer.
I’m not sure what makes some people risk-junkies, others dormice: nature, nurture, a bit of both. I trace my imprudence to my parents’ example. They stayed in their cells and weren’t happy there. If that was the reward for compliance, why not try defiance? Also, I was born curious, peeping where I oughtn’t. “Some men see things are they and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not,” wrote Shaw.
Risk-takers are fugitives, running toward, of course, but also from. My brain cannot tolerate inactivity. If I’ve “nothing on my mind,” my mind starts devouring itself, like the ouroboros. It’s not pretty. My two bouts of depression (so far) I attribute to loss of vocation. Losing sight of what I was looking for, I toppled into despair.
What jazzes my brain is the adventure of ignorance. I love not knowing. That’s why I’m always traveling – to the verge of my awareness. The travel may be geographical, conceptual, aesthetic: voluptuous ignorance awaits me in all directions. My ignorance never fails me: tiptoe past the known into the limitless unknown. Today’s thought-spree began with a familiar phrase, “risk appetite.” Where did the idea come from? How might it apply more generally? I met Professor Markowitz (fleetingly), whom I’d never known. Hi, professor.
Risk-takers predictably run into trouble, sometimes amok. We’re all Philip Petit in our little way, tiptoeing between the Twin Towers. The fear is the fun. We could go crash. These missives for me are little thrill-rides: beginning, I’ve no idea what words will come. Sometimes I go crash (I hope off-stage).
My nature is an accident, no accomplishment. That’s the conclusion I’ve tiptoed to in the old debate. We imagine ourselves free to choose, only our tendencies precede our choices. I stumbled into humility because nothing else made sense. What luck to have lived long enough to discover my impotence (therefore, innocence)! We are who we are before we choose.
This is old news, but one must discover it for oneself. “The greater part of what my neighbors call good,” wrote Thoreau, “I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
Marcus Aurelius made the same point differently: “The purpose of your life is not to do as the majority does, but to live according to the inner law which you understand in yourself. Do not act against your conscience or against truth. Live like this, and you will fulfill the task of your life.”