What Remains When the Conditions Disappear?
If you want to understand someone’s true strength, don’t look at what they achieved.
Look at the environment needed for them to achieve it.
Because inside the condition lies the weakness.
A man who only thrives in:
a booming economy
a warm network
a culturally protected environment
a high-growth region
a cheap-capital era
a forgiving regulatory regime
a language monopoly
a narrative tailwind
an institution doing half the work for him
…is not strong.
He is conditional.
Remove the conditions and the output collapses.
We never had language for this, so we talked about “cycles” — someone who’s been through multiple cycles, survived volatility, endured resets.
But when you actually look at their profession and their life, you start to see the same conditional congruency everywhere.