Adaptation and Maladaptation in the Past
Adaptation and Maladaptation in the Past
A Case Study And Some Implications
Adaptation and maladaptation are best viewed as different phases in the relationship between a society and its (social and natural) environment. This chapter looks at that relationship over two scales (millennial and centennial) and attributes the transitions (“tipping points”) between adaptation and maladaptation to the unintended consequences of human actions. These, in turn, are due to the difference in dimensionality between the environment and humans’ perception of it. Transitions between adaptation and maladaptation occur when a society’s “value space” (i.e., the total set of values that the society knows, which keep that society functionally together) does not expand at a sufficient pace to keep up with the growth of the society’s population. This chapter argues that this is the case in the current, western-dominated global system, and suggests that an inversion of global information flows (i.e., spreading information rather than concentrating it in the West) has the potential to reenergize the global economic system. This needs to be achieved while respecting the environment, hence the term green growth. It implies rephrasing the current economic and political debates from “burden sharing” to “opportunity creation,” both for the developing and for the developed world.
Keywords: Strüngmann Forum Reports, adaptation, burden sharing, crises, innovation, maladaptation, opportunity creation, societal transitions, value space
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
