Escaping the Trap that Comes With the Evolution of Civilization – Part 5/5

October 10, 2010

Guest Post by K. D. Koratsky – Originally published at Living With Evolution. Due to its academic nature, this version has been edited, revised and serialized with permission from the author.

It is through this evolutionary lens, therefore, that the current trends in the West and the East were quite predictable.

For while China had largely embraced flawed socialistic ideas and enacted dysfunctional policies that were counter to evolutionary performance benchmarks, which in turn led to their performance stagnation, America enjoyed a meteoric rise in status by embracing the enlightenment ideals of constitutional democratic republicanism and free-market capitalism that are remarkably well supported by evolutionary principles.

And now, as the West has increasingly allowed a particularly virulent strain of socialistic cultural mutations to set in, reflecting the degree of its previous rise, the degradation in performance has been just as spectacular, leading to what may prove to be the most-rapid regression to the mean for an empire ever recorded.

Meanwhile, it is the East that has increasingly embraced the Enlightenment ideals that led to the rise of the West while the latter simultaneously abandons them.

Rejecting Regress

 

It is with all this in mind, therefore, that we know the regression to the mean can be overcome at every level of human existence.

Indeed, all one must do is, first, accept that the level of adherence to evolutionary principles will dictate success or failure, and second, fashion all policies around the ideas that stem from this acceptance.

The result will not only be greatest possible level of continued prosperity and survivability for any given individual or group that embraces evolutionary ideals, but the greatest possible level of prosperity and survivability for the human species as a whole.

Return to Escaping the Trap – Part 4

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K. D. Koratsky is the author of Living With Evolution or Dying Without it: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present and Future. Koratsky also writes a Blog on this subject at Living With Evolution.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Escaping the Trap that Comes With the Evolution of Civilization – Part 4/5

October 9, 2010

Guest Post by K. D. Koratsky – Originally published at Living With Evolution. Due to its academic nature, this version has been edited, revised and serialized with permission from the author.

Societal Regress

 

What happens in families after one successful generation often leads to a collapse over several generations meaning that what was achieved is lost and hardship returns.

This occurs generally for societies and empires too.

This is what is happening in America today.

As nations rise in rank by performing at a very high standard, the wealth and opportunity created by previous generation(s) is increasingly taken for granted.

Then a false sense of situational permanence, entitlement and invincibility set in. We see this happening in America with the self-esteem generation.

And correspondingly, dysfunctional decision-making and cultural mutations increase to the degree that a population begins to perceive itself as impervious to surrounding threats, assuming such threats are acknowledged at all.

The result is that ideas without regard for functionality and adaptivity lead to policies that at best lack functionality and adaptivity and at worse produce entirely self-destructive trends—noting policies that even allow the competition to gain an edge will almost certainly prove self-destructive somewhere down the line, likely when the next time of scarcity comes along.

Return to Escaping the Trap – Part 3 or go to Escaping the Trap – Part 5

_________________________

K. D. Koratsky is the author of Living With Evolution or Dying Without it: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present and Future. Koratsky also writes a Blog on this subject at Living With Evolution.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Escaping the Trap that Comes With the Evolution of Civilization – Part 3/5

October 9, 2010

Guest Post by K. D. Koratsky – Originally published at Living With Evolution. Due to its academic nature, this version has been edited, revised and serialized with permission from the author.

What we see within human populations is that those who rise in status through skill and industriousness, whether in good times or bad, will tend to have an increasingly easier time of it than the competition.

Indeed, the higher one’s status—and the greater one’s access to resources and protection from threats of all kinds—the easier life becomes.

However, this is when dysfunctional mutations increase, as there is little or no culling force to keep them from doing so.

Indeed, unlike the deliberate pace at which this can be expected to occur for nonhuman species that are much more or entirely dependent on genetic modification for adaptation, humans are able to modify their behavior more rapidly via decision-making and cultural behavioral modification—for better or worse.

Therefore, it is typical within a family that a highly successful generation may not keep up the same high behavioral standards that led to success.

Whatever the case, those in the next generation will almost certainly have an easier time of it than their parents, and are less likely, on average, to develop the same levels of talent, motivation to succeed and drive that their parents had.

For this reason, it is rare for highly successful parents to produce offspring that perform at the same level, let alone at a higher one.

In fact, this second generation tends to more or less keep the momentum created by their parents going. By the time the third generation rolls around, the performance ethic of the first generation will have suffered a second round of deterioration.

By the fourth generation it is common for the regression to be complete.

Return to Escaping the Trap – Part 2 or go to Escaping the Trap – Part 4

_________________________

K. D. Koratsky is the author of Living With Evolution or Dying Without it: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present and Future. Koratsky also writes a Blog on this subject at Living With Evolution.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Escaping the Trap that Comes With the Evolution of Civilization – Part 2/5

October 9, 2010

Guest Post by K. D. Koratsky – Originally published at Living With Evolution. Due to its academic nature, this version has been edited, revised and serialized with permission from the author. 

The way individuals or civilizations compete for survival differs due to the circumstances.

Taking the tough times first, it isn’t difficult to see that when resources are short and aggression is intense, only those with the very best economic and combat skills, on average, will avoid extinction within any given niche.

In short, there will be strong selection pressure against all characteristics that lack a high degree of functionality and/or adaptivity.


America: The Coming Collapse? You Decide!

This pattern is illustrated by human history and within the fossil record at large.

In contrast, we also find that good times produce the opposite effect.

That is, instead of there being strong selection pressure for only the most functional and adaptive of characteristics to survive when resources are plentiful and are increasing rapidly, those who are not skilled economically (work or business) or in combat  may well be able to still make a living.

Hence, it is in good times that we can expect to see an increase of nonfunctional and even dysfunctional mutations in humanity that would typically be trimmed away with normal rates of evolutionary attrition.

Return to Escaping the Trap – Part 1 or go to Escaping the Trap – Part 3

_________________________

K. D. Koratsky is the author of Living With Evolution or Dying Without it: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present and Future. Koratsky also writes a Blog on this subject at Living With Evolution.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar. 

Leave a Comment » | America, China, environment, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Escaping the Trap that Comes With the Evolution of Civilization – Part 1/5

October 8, 2010

Guest Post by K. D. Koratsky – Originally published at Living With Evolution. Due to its academic nature, this version has been edited, revised and serialized with permission from the author.

 

 

Study enough history and you will see that even the greatest, most powerful civilizations vanished. One example are the Mayans.

The Aztecs, Incas, Romans, Greeks, Persians and Egyptian civilizations all came to an end, so will the powerful empires of today.

In fact, the America empire specifically and the West generally have been in an unmistakable state of decline over the last several decades.

Meanwhile, China specifically and the East generally have risen over the same period.

In fact, Chinese civilization has collapsed and been reborn several times.  The earliest known dynasty, the Xia (2205 to 1783 B.C.), survived for more than 400 years before collapsing.

Today, We appear to be witnessing the latest examples of empires rising and falling in inevitable fashion according to some immutable law.

However, while there is indeed a tendency for empires to fall once they have arisen, this tendency can be overcome.

Repetitive Regress

Generally speaking, the falls of empires typify a regression to the mean that is the standard not only for empires, but for human families, individuals, and even nonhuman species as well.

This phenomenon is a natural outgrowth of greater evolutionary dynamics.

To understand why, we must examine the way cycles of good times and bad affect species and those within them as all compete for survival.

Go to Escaping the Trap – Part 2

_________________________

K. D. Koratsky is the author of Living With Evolution or Dying Without it: A Guide to Understanding Humanity’s Past, Present and Future. Koratsky also writes a Blog on this subject at Living With Evolution.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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