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Musings Report 2023-15 4-8-23 Adaptation Is Messy and Imperfect
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Adaptation Is Messy and Imperfect
Adaptation and evolution sound good as abstractions, but in the real world adaptation is messy, imperfect, contingent and incomplete. Adaptation fits the saying attributed to Emerson: life is a journey, not a destination. Adaptation is a process that never reaches completion. Success might be partial, temporary or elusive.
Here's an example: in an interview on CSPAN, Stacy Schiff, author of a meticulously-researched account of Cleopatra (Cleopatra: A Life), summarized Cleopatra's great accomplishment as retaining Egypt's autonomy for two decades against the rising tide of the Roman Empire. (Speaking nine languages has to count, too.) Cleopatra's adaptations to Rome's encroaching power were only temporary, as Egypt eventually fell under the control of Rome, but her adaptative strategies were nonetheless successful for 20 years.
If you'll forgive a sports analogy, armchair quarterbacks reviewing recordings of a game can pinpoint lost opportunities ("the receiver was wide open, how could the quarterback miss that?") and second-guess the plays being called, but in real time the quarterback has to read the defense and decide to go with the coach's play or call an audible--change the play seconds before the ball is snapped--and then scan the field as the other team's players attempt to pound him into the turf.
We're all quarterbacks of our own lives, and calling audibles is inherently risky. But so is leaving everything unchanged.
The process of adaptation is not just risky, messy, imperfect, etc., it may lead to adaptations that look like failures to those with the luxury of hindsight but which were as successful as circumstances allowed in that time and place.
Consider the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The very term Dark Ages reflects the conclusion that there was very little in the way of successful adaptation occurring in those bleak centuries.
More recent histories have taken a more nuanced view of the Dark Ages. (It's now popular to discount these new accounts by pointing out that life was awful and the Dark Ages were in fact Dark, for example While Not In Vogue, The Dark Ages Were Pretty Dark.)
Of the many books I've read on Rome and the centuries following its demise in 476 AD/CE, two that present a tumultuous period of adaptation to changing circumstances are The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000 by Chris Wickham and Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire by Judith Herrin.
In Herrin's account, we find an Eastern Roman Empire that endured for a thousand years after the end of the Western Empire. Yes, the Byzantine Empire waxed and waned but at its numerous high tides, it showed not just remarkable resilience but also remarkable adaptability in the face of more or less constant existential threats from neighboring empires and tribal confederacies.
By thwarting one invading force after another for centuries, The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) saved fragmented Western Europe from being conquered and enabled its eventual consolidation and ability to defend itself from the ascendant Ottoman Empire. Even as it weakened, Byzantium transferred its vast wealth of knowledge (and treasure) to the West. (Many of the most memorable masterpieces in Venice were looted from Constantinople.)
The Inheritance of Rome is a fascinating account of how Roman influence endured for centuries as post-Roman Europe slowly transitioned through imperial vestiges (Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire) to the eventual consolidation of feudalism.
Throughout this supposed Dark Age, the Christian churches (West and East) were effective centralized organizations on the Roman model that influenced social, economic and political structures in virtually all of what had once been the sprawling Roman Empire.
The monks living out their lives in monasteries making copies of ancient Greek and Roman texts (and writing complaints about the tedious labor in the margins) preserved these texts so they could be rediscovered in the 14th century, catalyzing the Renaissance. (This story was told in the book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.)
The constant threat of invasion / conquest was not the only selective pressure; catastrophes unleashed by climate change and disease weakened both Western and Eastern Roman empires, a reality discussed in The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire.
Although the historical record is sketchy, it seems the cooling climate pushed the Huns of the central Asian steppes westward, and this invasion then pushed the Goths and other tribes into Roman territories, a multi-decade "Barbarian" invasion that was the direct cause of Western Rome's collapse: The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.
As this book explains, had Rome handled the influx of "Barbarians" more adeptly, the outcome might well have been different. The Roman leadership was hobbled by centuries-old biases against "Barbarians" that blinded the Romans to the adaptations of the Germanic tribes into larger, more cohesive and therefore more militarily dangerous confederations.
The larger point here is adaptation is inherently risky and challenging, but it is especially so in times of tumultuous change, multiplying economic-geopolitical threats and global pressures arising from climate change, pandemics and the depletion of essential resources. This describes the present.
We cannot assume our systemic socio-economic-political adaptations will be successful, or successful in some sort of permanent "OK, we're done" manner. They may well track history in generating arrangements that don't seem successful compared to a glorious past or an unrealistically rosy expectation of the future, but which are as successful as circumstances allow.
In such periods, it matters where you are. Was life so wretched in Charlemagne's orbit or in the resurgent Byzantine Empire in 805? By modern standards, it was substandard, but in comparison to truly wretched circumstances elsewhere, life was relatively good in more secure, wealthier enclaves.
One adaptation available to many of us is to move. Another is to swim with the tide rather than exhaust ourselves by swimming against forces larger than ourselves. Another is to reduce the Expectation Gap between what circumstances can reasonably deliver and what we expect.
Highlights of the Blog
Why Interest Rates Are Not Going Back to Zero 4/6/23
Here's How We'll Have Labor Shortages and High Unemployment at the Same Time 4/3/23
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
I made Eggplant Parmesan from scratch, using the abundance of eggplant, tomatoes and fresh basil from our gardens. I started with Marcella Hazan's recipe in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (pages 494-5) which I modified by adding onions and garlic to the tomatoes and by baking the eggplant slices rather than deep-frying them. I live with two excellent cooks and so their approval means it was pretty good.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Treatment of Long COVID symptoms with triple anticoagulant therapy
New sensor could tell patients if they have COVID or the flu within seconds
The Saving Glut of the Rich
Will the Chinese renminbi replace the US dollar? (Michael Pettis)
How China Keeps Putting Off Its Lehman Moment
Why the Bezzle Matters to the Economy
Saudi Arabia’s Oil Production Cuts Reflect Cost of Reshaping Economy: Riyadh needs to keep prices high enough to fund grandiose gigaprojects
I’m an ER doctor: Here’s what I found when I asked ChatGPT to diagnose my patients -- worth a careful read....
The Association of Work Overload with Burnout and Intent to Leave the Job Across the Healthcare Workforce During COVID-19 (via Tom D.)
How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them: "We literally click & submit," a former Cigna doctor said. "It takes all of 10 seconds to do 50 at a time."
Woke the plank! Were pirate ships actually beacons of diversity and democracy?
"Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey." Marcel Proust
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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