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2 3 Fitness is the capacity to cope with complex challenges and opportunities to enhance one’s own survival and other interests. The fitness of every organism, including whole societies and the international system, is found somewhere on the spectrum between rigid order and chaos (in politics, anarchy)—but usually closer to the edge of chaos.1 The Greeks said that Alexander went as far as Chaos. According to Emerson (1847), however, Goethe—one of the most creative spirits ever—went that far and then hazarded one step farther, but brought himself safely back. This view of fitness is close to what Folke et al. (2002) call “resilience”— the capacity to buffer change, learn, and develop. But “resilience” connotes a defensive stance, while “fitness” suggests an ability not only to withstand pressure but also a capacity to create values and alter the environment. In short, the concept of fitness offers a framework for understanding how to sustain and enhance adaptive capacity in a complex world of rapid transformations.2 How to achieve fitness? There are at least three answers (Mitchell 2009): Natural selection. Small-scale, genetic mutations and recombinations help some individuals and, in time, larger groupings to adapt, survive, and multiply in their ever changing environment. Mutations occur at random and are not biased toward improvement or degradation. An apparently fit species (such as dinosaurs) may disappear if it cannot adapt. Humans have proved adaptable and resilient. Apart from formal organizations and signed documents, states and chapter two Basic Concepts of Complexity Science 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 16 17 18 19 20 2 4 C O M P L E X I T Y S C I E N C E A N D W OR L D A F FA I R S nonstate actors often coalesce for shared purposes, for example, the tendency of states worried about the rise of China to gravitate toward Washington. Historical contingency. History usually moves more like a ponderous freighter than a nimble kayak. Profound turning points in human affairs are rare. They usually emerge as a consequence of many factors accumulating and multiplying over time. Whereas natural selection operates slowly and gradually, the life cycle of systems is often characterized by punctuated equilibrium—a pattern of rapid growth, followed by a long plateau, terminated by an often rapid decline or upsurge—sometimes brought about by critical threshold effects (Gould 1989, 2002; Somit and Peterson 1992). Biology remains constant but prospers or wanes in a changed environment. Change may come suddenly like a thief in the night. More grains of sand can make entire systems lurch in a nonlinear fashion into a new phase space. This concept may help explain the rise and fall of states, and empires as well as movements and fashions. The historian Niall Ferguson (2011, 257–59; 2012) argues that the greatness that was Rome collapsed suddenly. The USSR disappeared not with a bang but a whimper. As we shall see in chapter 7, the United States shifted in just a few years from being an awesome but widely respected hyperpower to one widely despised and sometimes ignored. Both the USSR and U.S.A. suffered from many small and large burdens including the consequences of military and political overreach. Structures. The key to fitness is self-organization—a capacity by members of a group to cooperate for shared goals without top-down commands. Self-organization can take place without natural selection or historical catastrophes or boons. Scientists find abundant instances in nature of “order for free”—as when corals, polyps, fishes, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, sponges, and other life forms cohabitate in positive symbiosis. The coral reef is a complex adaptive system that provides mutual gain for its inhabitants. Even closer integration is practiced by ants and termites as they build their nests, feed, and procreate. Humans can think and plan what kind of order to pursue, but often they too move in similar directions or even coordinate their actions with no discussion or commands from above. Self-organization often gives rise to power laws in social systems, because of “preferential attachment”—the principle that in a network, a node with more connections is likely to attract more connections in future. This explains the rich-get-richer effect. Studying the evolution of the most common English words and phrases over five centuries, Perc (2012) found that power laws were at play Along with the steady growth of the English...

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