Choosing Survival: Creating Highly Adaptive Societies

By John Kemp

Highly adaptive societies will determine whether civilization survives the challenges of the 21st century. Choosing Survival presents this startling new concept, defining such societies and showing how they have evolved, spread around the world, created a complex interactive network, and become the principal drivers of social change. The extraordinary events associated with the global evolution of highly adaptive societies are presented continent by continent and nation by nation. This unique model of social change provides a compelling new narrative for the modern era of world history, a fundamental reinterpretation of the current geopolitical scene, and numerous striking predictions about the future of the US, the EU, China, Russia, India and the other nations of the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483500430

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Part One

An Overview of the Highly Adaptive Society: The Concept and its Consequences

Chapter One: The Concept of the Highly Adaptive Society

The highly adaptive society is defined and its implications are explained.

What does history tell us? Many people think that we are locked into a repeating cycle of the rise and fall of great powers and empires. According to this view, the US is just the most recent power to dominate the world and it is now in a state of decline. The prediction that follows is that US power will proceed toward an inevitable collapse, global disorder and conflict will ensue and some new power will eventually rise above the wreckage to restart the cycle.

This cyclical view of history is probably no longer relevant. Over the last 500 years, an evolutionary process of social change has gradually and fundamentally altered the ways in which societies develop and interact with each other. The process began to take shape in the late 16th century in northwestern Europe as the ideas of the Northern Renaissance and the forces of the Protestant Reformation collided and created a new, more highly adaptive social structure with a selective survival advantage. Since then, highly adaptive societies have evolved, increased in number, created most of the world’s wealth and power, spread all over the globe to all major cultural traditions, and begun to interact with each other in complex new ways. A growing network of highly adaptive societies has now become the principal force driving global social change and has transformed the geopolitical landscape. The global evolution of highly adaptive societies has fundamentally altered the course of history; it has most likely interrupted the repetitive cycle of the rise and fall of empires.

This new model of social evolution is important for at least three reasons. First, it provides a fundamentally new way to re-analyze the last five hundred years of history. Second, it creates a new context for interpreting current social structure and geopolitical order. Third, and perhaps most significantly, it gives rise to a broad range of long term predictions about the future course of global social change and geopolitical events in the 21st century.

What is a highly adaptive society? It is a nation-state that has acquired and developed a stable set of five key institutions: a representative form of government, a market-oriented economy, a growing scientific and technical enterprise, a universal system of education, and a system of religious practice which becomes progressively more disentangled from government and progressively more tolerant of diverse beliefs. These are highly adaptive institutions. A society which possesses a stable set of all five of them has a significantly increased capacity to respond to challenges. Such a society therefore possesses a powerful continuing survival advantage.

How do these five institutions create a survival advantage? They cause social power to fragment. As that occurs, the society becomes less rigid and more fluid. Increased social fluidity translates into an increased capacity for innovation and that in turn translates into an increased capacity to withstand challenges – thus providing a survival advantage. Over the last five hundred years, the cumulative geopolitical effect of that survival advantage has been truly dramatic.

Why has it taken hundreds of years for highly adaptive societies to evolve and spread? History tells us that human societies are intrinsically predisposed to the creation of hierarchical structures and to the concentration of power at the top of those structures. History also tells us that those who acquire power almost invariably resist losing it. This means that the acquisition and development of power-fragmenting highly adaptive institutions has always been, and continues to be, resisted at every step.

Given such resistance, what has allowed highly adaptive institutions to actually take root and spread? The short answer is modernization: The desire to modernize has been and remains an increasingly powerful force driving social change.

Highly adaptive institutions are both a consequence and a cause of modernization. Highly adaptive institutions are a consequence of modernization because the acquisition of new technologies increases social complexity. As new social groups arise to master, maintain and teach new technologies, they compete for – and fragment – power. The effects continuously ripple through all of the social structures of modernizing societies.

Highly adaptive institutions also cause modernization. They facilitate adaptive innovation and thus lead to the generation of new technologies and increased social complexity. Adaptive success then causes more modernization as a result of emulation. Over time, more adaptive modernizing societies become attractive role models for less adaptive, less modern societies as the latter increasingly come to realize that certain institutional structures are unavoidably connected with long term success in a challenging world.

Modernization therefore generates a self-reinforcing social dynamic. As societies begin to modernize, they gradually become more complex. Complexity gradually fragments social power. Fragmented social power provides a survival advantage through increased innovative capacity. The process builds upon itself as continuing adaptive success produces further modernization and attracts emulation. This means that, over time, modernization creates a social dynamic that is ultimately more powerful than the human predisposition to concentrate social power. The evolution of the highly adaptive society is therefore inextricably intertwined with modernization and with fragmentation of social power.

Highly adaptive institutions – and highly adaptive societies – take root through processes of change that have been, and remain, complicated, chaotic, and almost invariably unpredictable in their short-term details. Because of the ever present human drive to acquire and maintain concentrated power, the opposing process of fragmentation of power sometimes results in abrupt and violent change. Very commonly however, the process of change is slow and incremental. The process is always difficult and can undergo reversals for varying periods of time. Nevertheless, the overall pattern of recent modern history is very clear. One way or another, modernizing societies all over the world have been and are being driven to acquire and develop highly adaptive, power-fragmenting institutions.

The consequences have been dramatic. Empires have disappeared. Nation-states have arisen. Dictators have fallen. Military coups have decreased. Monarchs have ceded powers to elected assemblies. One-party rule has evolved into multiparty rule. The right to vote has expanded, and the rights of women and minorities have increased. The events of the Arab Spring are only the most recent indication that the process of fragmentation of power is now truly global in nature. It is occurring in all major cultural settings.

But the evolution of the highly adaptive society is more than just fragmentation of power. It also involves the continuous re-building and reconfiguration of power relationships. It reflects the fact that highly adaptive societies have learned from history that voluntary cooperation and integration can yield significant benefits. So, after World War II, the continuously evolving highly adaptive societies of Western Europe came to two conclusions. The first was that they would ultimately be better off if they disassembled their empires. The second was that they would be better off in the long run if they created a sort of United States of Europe. They therefore began the difficult process of creating the European Union. This example of voluntary regional integration and unification has since attracted the attention of the new nation states of the world and several attempts to emulate the process are now being undertaken in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

So, as empires have disintegrated, and as new nation-states have come into being, many of the latter have been attracted not only to the development of highly adaptive institutions internally, but also to the development of cooperative relationships externally. This means that an evolutionary process which initially played a key role in the Rise of the West has also gone on to play a fundamental role in the Rise (and integration) of the Rest.

Highly adaptive societies have already reached a critical mass and have permanently reshaped the global geopolitical landscape. They have created a complex web of regional and global institutions aimed at promoting collective self-defense, economic integration, and international trade. That has occurred in parallel with a proliferation of non-governmental organizations aimed at facilitating international cooperation in response to a large number of problems shared by many countries. The result has been the creation of an ever growing, ever more complex multi-layered global network consisting of nodes of both governmental and non-governmental origin. This is the network of highly adaptive societies.

This network has had two important effects. First, as more and more institutional cross-links have developed, the network has steadily pulled evolving highly adaptive societies closer together. Second, like other highly adaptive institutions, the network has also steadily fragmented power. This effect has occurred for all institutional relationships in the network but has been especially significant for the globalization of economic interactions. The network has promoted the accelerated international migration of multinational corporations and investment capital as new opportunities for growth and profit have been pursued. This has produced active diffusion of economic and political power. As new highly adaptive societies have developed, they have diminished the relative wealth and power of other highly adaptive societies. The G7 has become the G20 and both India and Brazil are now seeking permanent seats on the UN Security Council.

By simultaneously pulling evolving highly adaptive societies closer together and by reducing the power differentials between them, the network has reduced the ability of any single society to determine the course of global events and thereby reduced the chance of conflict. It has not been an easy process. Bringing nations closer always generates tensions. Nevertheless, the facts suggest that the network of highly adaptive societies is self-reinforcing and self stabilizing.

The growing strength of the network of highly adaptive societies has also had two implications for residual less adaptive societies. First, it has become steadily less likely that any single less adaptive society, or any combination thereof, will be able to disrupt the network and establish dominant hegemonic power. Second, as recent history as repetitively demonstrated, people living in less adaptive societies have become increasingly attracted to the institutions of highly adaptive societies. They have seen what happens when less adaptive, power-concentrating leaders have failed to understand what is going on around them and have led their nations into decline and isolation. In the long run, the network of highly adaptive societies will change the less adaptive societies - not the other way around. Power will fragment in the less adaptive societies. They will ultimately emulate highly adaptive societies and become part of the network.

Overall, the growing strength of the network of highly adaptive societies has most likely interrupted the repetitive cycle of the rise and fall of great powers. The global evolution of highly adaptive societies has therefore probably permanently altered the course of history.

The next chapter provides a condensed history of the development and global spread of highly adaptive societies, from the late 16th century to the present day. It provides evidence that current geopolitical reality is in fact the cumulative product of social changes brought about by persistent evolutionary forces, acting over hundreds of years.

Chapter Two: An Overview of the Origins and Global Evolution of the Highly Adaptive society

A condensed history of the development and global spread of highly adaptive societies, from the late 16th century to the present day, is presented.

The recent evolutionary origins of the highly adaptive society can be traced back to northwestern Europe in the late 16th century. Several forces causing social change came together and resulted in the creation of the Dutch Republic, the first newly emerging nation state with clearly recognizable early precursors of key power-fragmenting institutions. The Dutch Republic arose out of a collection of provinces of the Habsburg Empire which contained prominent cities successfully engaged in sea-based trade. The latter cities had become the home of the Northern Renaissance as new ideas spread from the Italian city states. The provinces were then transformed by the Protestant Reformation, as Calvinist and anti-Catholic ideas quickly took root.

The repressive policies of the Catholic King of Spain, Philip II, then served as the actual proximate cause of the formation of the Republic. His brutality generated enough anger and resentment to induce the provinces to band together and fight for their independence. Although the Dutch were themselves primarily responsible for the ultimate success of their revolt (referred to as the Eighty Years’ War, from 1568-1648), it did not hurt to get support from England, another non-Catholic nation also threatened by Spain. By the time Dutch independence was formally recognized in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia, the wars of religion spawned by the Reformation had fractured the power structure of Europe and created an environment that gave rise to an evolutionary process of social change which then went on to change the course of history.

Throughout most of the 17th century, and in spite of significant hostility and competition, the people of the Dutch Republic experienced a Golden Age. Their wealth increased as they created a trading empire. They created the first large commercial Bank in the form of the Bank of Amsterdam and an early stock market. Art and science also flourished. The fragmentation of power in Dutch society allowed for a more tolerant atmosphere which was attractive to religious and political refugees who came from all over Europe and enriched all aspects of Dutch society.

The Dutch Republic almost became the world’s first highly adaptive society, but it ultimately stagnated and went into decline. Its adaptive capacities were insufficient to overcome the numerous challenges it faced. The Anglo-Dutch wars were costly. Although the Dutch had great naval sophistication, they gradually lost the competition with Great Britain. The Dutch also did not live on an island. They became overextended in their unavoidable military commitments on the continent and were financially exhausted by the time of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It is impossible to know if they would have fared better with a truly unified and stable representative form of government, but that never developed. Near the end of the 18th century, popular resentment connected up with Napoleonic influence and the Dutch Republic became the unstable revolutionary Batavian Republic. Napoleon’s brother was appointed King in 1806 and a monarchical form of government was installed as a result of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Dutch Republic was never able to complete an uninterrupted sequence of development of highly adaptive institutions.

Nevertheless, the influence and legacy of the Dutch Republic was far more significant than most people realize. In one particularly important event, it provided the right type of leader to England in 1688 as the latter nation experienced a critical event in its own process of fragmentation of political power. At that time, there was a strong fear that the Catholic Church would again become dominant in England under James II. William of Orange (the Dutch Stadtholder) and his wife Mary were Protestant and needed England as an ally against Catholic France. In a mutually beneficial process which in English history is referred to as the Glorious Revolution, William colluded with the anti-royal and anti-Catholic forces in England to force James II from the throne by staging an invasion. William and Mary then became the new monarchs of England. However, as part of the plan, they agreed to sign the Declaration of Right. This was a truly remarkable document. It ensured the supremacy of Parliamentary power over that of the King (and therefore also over the Church) in England.

The signing of the Declaration of Right was an event of fundamental and lasting historical significance. It was a key institutional innovation associated with the fragmentation of political power and it was a critical step in the chain of events which ultimately led to the global evolution of the highly adaptive society. The Declaration almost certainly could not and would not have come into existence without the prior history of fragmented power in the Dutch Republic. The fragmentation of power which it created helped set the stage for all of the institutional threads of the highly adaptive society to gradually come together in England and then undergo continuous uninterrupted development for the first time. As a result, England (later Great Britain and then the United Kingdom) went on to change the course of history. It gave birth to the industrial revolution and became the most powerful nation in the world in the 19th century.

Along the way, Great Britain gave rise to an 18th century evolutionary offshoot, the United States of America. And even though the US came into being by revolt against Great Britain, there is no doubt that it took the concept of the supremacy of representative government from Britain. And just as the provinces which became the Dutch Republic had to innovate as they created a new state under stress, so too did the former British colonies. When they realized that their confederation was unstable, they devised a new constitution and, in so doing, created new mechanisms for the fragmentation of political power. While the Dutch were never able to stabilize and fully develop their political system, the Americans were quite clearly able to do so. The US then evolved into a highly adaptive society and went on to become the most powerful nation of the 20th century. Meanwhile Canada, another British evolutionary offshoot in North America, also evolved into a highly adaptive society.

Most of the other nations of the Western Hemisphere went on to gain their independence from colonial control in the early part of the 19th century. This was due in large part to the destabilization of the power structures of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Era. As the new evolutionary offshoots attempted to develop highly adaptive institutions, they faced two great obstacles. The first obstacle was that they had inherited much more rigid social, economic, and political power structures from Spain and Portugal. The second obstacle was that their struggles were often further complicated by American military interventions aimed at protecting rigid power structures.

Why did those interventions occur? Why would the US, a nation engaged in developing its own power-fragmenting institutions, interfere in the development of power-fragmenting institutions in other countries? There were two main reasons. First, the US, like its predecessor Great Britain, passed through a phase of development (which peaked in the late 19th and early 20th century) in which it exhibited imperial ambition and hegemonic behavior towards weaker nations. Second, during the Cold War, the US and the USSR were engaged in a struggle for power and influence all over the globe, including the Western Hemisphere.

The collapse of the Soviet Union (another step in the ongoing global process of fragmentation of power) meant that the US had less to fear and therefore less reason to intervene. This helped accelerate the independent evolutionary development of highly adaptive institutions in the Western Hemisphere. Many nations (Chile, Brazil, and Mexico are just three of several examples) have succeeded in developing stable, multi-party systems of representative government and market oriented economies. They have become prosperous and highly attractive continental role models. It has become clear that nations like these, along with the US and Canada, will ultimately determine the long term direction of development and social change in the Hemisphere. In contrast, the nations which have experienced (or re-experienced) concentrated political power and state centric models of economic development have become increasingly dysfunctional. They will eventually have to change course in order to adapt, survive and succeed.

After the Napoleonic Era, and after the re-concentration of power resulting from the Congress of Vienna, the development of highly adaptive institutions began to accelerate in the mid-19th century in Western Europe. The new constitutional monarchy of Belgium succeeded in breaking away from the post-Congress United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1839. Parliamentary supremacy was firmly established in the Netherlands in1848 - the same year the Swiss Confederation achieved unity and a stable democratic central government. Denmark acquired a democratic constitution in 1849. France finally acquired a stable representative government in the 1870s and its subsequent development was not significantly altered by the German occupation in World War II. Sweden and Norway were clearly embarked on separate adaptive developmental pathways by the end of the 19th century and, by the end of World War I, had been joined by Finland.

Italy and Germany became recognizable as unified nation-states in the latter half of the 19th century but did not acquire truly stable representative governments until after World War II. This was also true for Austria, an even newer nation which emerged from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I. Finally, Spain, Portugal, and Greece acquired stable representative governments in the mid-1970s. Currently, all of these nations (except Switzerland and Norway) are members of the European Union. It is worth noting at this point that the requirements for membership in the EU (the Copenhagen Criteria) are quite similar to the definition of a highly adaptive society.

During the latter half of the 20th century, the spread of highly adaptive institutions was no longer restricted to the nations of Western Europe and their evolutionary offshoots or colonial derivatives. Following the collapse of the Soviet Empire, most of the nations of Eastern Europe either became, or have applied to become, members of the EU – in spite of the fact that many of them had little prior experience with representative government – and only modest prior experience with modern market economics. This shows that, after World War II, the appeal of modernizing highly adaptive institutions flowed across borders and through cultural barriers, a point of very profound long term significance for the long term process of fragmentation of power.

Russia, however, had the misfortune of being the first nation to fall victim to an ideology which resulted in the re-concentration of power. For almost 75 years a communist tyranny struggled, as all dysfunctional power-concentrating tyrannies ultimately do, to prevent its own demise. The USSR and its empire did however collapse and did result in the liberation of most of Eastern Europe and the creation of five new Central Asian Republics and Mongolia. Power also began to fragment in Russia. The stress of the change was great however and, in a manner which was entirely consistent with the historical traditions of the Tsarist era, Russia suffered a familiar relapse into more repressive behavior.

In East Asia, Japan was the first nation to embark on a path towards modernization. This occurred in the latter half of the 19th century during the period known as the Meiji restoration. The nascent institutions of representative government were however not strong enough to survive the temptations of imperialism and the economic dislocations of the Depression. As in Germany, power concentrating militarists seized control of the government and led the nation to war and disaster. But, after being defeated in World War II and having its governmental relationships reconstructed by the Allies, Japan restarted its journey towards modernization. With a new set of power-fragmenting highly adaptive institutions, it rapidly rose to become a major industrial nation. It went on to develop the second largest economy in the world, a ranking it only recently surrendered to China.

Korea emerged from Japanese occupation as a new but divided nation after World War II. A Communist invasion of the South in 1950 was eventually repulsed, and South Korea then embarked on its struggle to modernize. It went through a prolonged period of military rule but began to fragment political power in 1992 and is now clearly identifiable as an increasingly prosperous evolving highly adaptive society. In stark contrast, North Korea, governed under another Communist tyranny, progressively deteriorated into a failed militaristic state.

Taiwan meanwhile mimicked South Korea. After coming into existence in 1949 as a result of civil war in China, and after many years of military government, Taiwan broke the pattern of one-party rule in 2000. The nation now appears to be engaged in the continuous development of highly adaptive institutions and thus appears to be an evolving highly adaptive society.

The other product of the Chinese civil war was the People’s Republic of China, which came into existence in 1949 on the mainland. Under the leadership of the Great Helmsman (Mao Tse-Tung), a power-concentrating Communist Party once again all but destroyed a country. After Mao’s death, the leaders of China knew they faced a desperate situation. Having observed the ongoing economic success of their Asian neighbors, the leaders of China chose a new course – the development of a more market oriented economy. The result has been the creation of a level of wealth for a portion of the Chinese population that is truly remarkable, surpassing all expectations. Nevertheless, China still remains a repressive one-party state; it is not yet a highly adaptive society.

In Southeast Asia, two additional British evolutionary offshoots, Australia and New Zealand, continued along the path toward the development of a highly adaptive society – just as Canada did in North America.

Thailand, like Japan, was never a colony of a Western power and, again like Japan, it also began to modernize on its own in the latter half of the 19th century. After World War II, it struggled with periods of military rule and just recently suffered another military coup. Civilian government has however once again been reinstated. Although Thailand is still struggling to develop a truly stable representative government, it is clear that the nation aspires to achieve that goal.

The former Spanish colony of the Philippines gained full independence from the US in1946 and started out with a representative form of government. Like other former Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere, the Philippines had difficulty developing stable highly adaptive institutions. Traditional power centers have been resistant to change, corruption has been endemic, and there have been repeated threats of military coups. Signs of real progress did however appear in the elections of 1986 and again in 2010.

Indonesia achieved independence from the Dutch in 1950 and went through a prolonged period of authoritarian and military rule. Key steps in the fragmentation of political power started in 1998; the President and Vice-President then won their offices in peaceful popular elections in 2004 and 2009. It is critical to understand the significance of the fact that the most populous Muslim country in the world is now developing highly adaptive institutions.

In 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia. It acquired and developed highly adaptive institutions and the nation became an unequivocal economic success. Although Lee Kwan Yew (the founding father of Singapore) and his political party concentrated political power and have long dominated the city state, it is nevertheless clear that the nation is making steady incremental progress toward further fragmentation of power.

Malaysia came into being with both a federal parliamentary system and a constitutional monarch. It has struggled with resistant power centers and one-party political dominance, but a trend toward continuing incremental fragmentation of power is clearly detectable.

Cambodia was nearly destroyed by Communist rule after the end of the Vietnam War. Following the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge (1975-79), the Vietnamese occupied the country from 1979 to 1989. Since then, with international assistance, the country has made a truly remarkable recovery. It is now a constitutional monarchy and is once again making progress