Value for Thursday of Week 27 in the season of Ripening

Being Ready and Adaptable

  • Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. [Martin Luther King, Jr.]
  • (Man is) a tool-making animal. [Thomas Carlyle via Benjamin Franklin]
  • It is not the strongest of the species that survives nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. [attributed to Charles Darwin]

People like being comfortable. Changing circumstances that upset our routines can be upsetting.

The ability to adapt to changing circumstances is essential to human welfare and, as Dr. King observed, to our survival. If we cannot adapt to changing circumstances, it is as though we expect the world to conform to our expectations, when in reality we must conform our behavior to the circumstances around us.

Context is essential. The propagandist has adapted to prevailing prejudices and may turn them to her personal and short-term advantage but that success is rarely good for the whole community. Humans have subdued the earth, after a fashion, but our “success” may be our undoing.

Adaptability is the fruit of openness. Its main relations are to time and changing circumstances. Only when we have mastered the ability to adapt are we truly ready to face the world on its own terms, as it is.

As is obvious from the wealth and content of scholarly literature on this subject, adaptation is a key concept in the dynamics of life. It describes how evolution operates as a result of environmental changes. This distinguishes it from that branch of evolution that addresses mutations and other changes within the evolving species or system. Thus, the study of adaptation is a branch of evolutionary science.

Real

True Narratives

Adaptation is central to human history and prehistory. We have long known that our technology threatens to outrun our ability to cope with it. The absence of adaptation theory from our educational curricula in late primary and secondary schools is a tragic and shameful oversight.

It is key to psychological health . . .

. . . and to physical health:

It is essential to anyone in pursuit of a new venture, such as a college or graduate level education.

Immigrants face adaptation challenges. Those who expect the challenges and are open to meeting them will often succeed.

Social systems are adaptive.

Technology is an adaptation.

Systems of thought evolve, including thinking about evolution.

Competitive adaptation occurs when two systems compete against each other for advantage.

Language, literature, and art are adaptive systems.

Adaptation occurs naturally through the evolutionary process. Adaptation through biological evolution favors the species, not the individuals within the species.

The seeds of adaptation are in nature, of course. By their nature, organisms have a capacity to adapt.

We humans have the capacity to adapt, or direct the evolution of other organisms, as a matter of choice.

Our technologies pose new adaptive challenges and may outrun our capacity to adapt to them.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program was an effort to eliminate poverty in the United States. Less than a generation later, the new global economy threatened the capacity of governments to sustain a vibrant middle class, with nations competing against each other for economic advantage, usually at the expense of most of their people. Across the millennia of history, until less than two hundred years ago, economies were local and regional. In a little more than a century, developed nations went through the era of national economies. Yet many people in the United States speak as though they are unaware that the industrial revolution has passed, while others seem oblivious to the fact that it ever happened. Governments and peoples across the world now face the challenges of the global economy, which challenges us to adapt to a new set of economic and political realities.

The fall of many great nations is a product of their people's unwillingness and failure to adapt to changing circumstances. A people is especially vulnerable to this when it has grown accustomed to success. The United States has been and remains a world power but political evolution raises serious questions. Here are some writings on contemporary challenges of adaptation:

Narratives of peoples that adapted and survived:

How will we respond to the influence of social media?

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Jim Crace’s “characters typically face some encroaching, inhospitable new order . . . where they must scramble to adapt or be mowed down.

Other authors:

Novels, from the dark side:

Poetry

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Duke Ellington adapted his musical style to suit contemporary tastes. You can follow his development from 1924-1947 on this 618-track anthology. Biographies about Ellington include those by Terry Teachout, M.D. Payne, A.H. Lawrence, John Bankston, Stephanie Stein Crease, Mark Tucker (ed.), Henry G. Cohen, Carin T. Ford, and Rebecca Carey Rohan. Books mainly about his influence are by Ken Rattenbury and John Franceschina. Ellington authored an autobiography. Ellington’s career offers lessons in day-to-day living, and for success in business. “Duke Ellington led one of the greatest jazz bands ever. At the same time, he ran a successful business with an excellent team. He did so by using a combination of business savvy and leadership skills. Today’s business managers can apply Ellington’s techniques to achieve success in their domains.” His albums and live performances include:

In addition to composing and performing jazz, Ellington also composed symphonic works:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, musicians turned to performing remotely, even in ensemble. A prolific exponent of this was Arturo O’Farrill and his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, under the auspices of Afro Latin Jazz Alliance. They performed every Sunday evening, creating a Virtual Birdland series that you can hear and watch on YouTube.

Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major, M. 82 (1930) (approx. 18-20’): Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during World War I, commissioned Ravel to compose a work he could play with his left hand only. “The Concerto unfolds in a single movement that falls into three sections. An impressive feat of musical legerdemain and illusion, the full sound and texture of the solo part rarely give the slightest hint that a mere single hand is involved.” Top performances are by Fleisher (Ozawa) in 1992, Zimerman (Boulez) in 1998, Bavouzet (Tortelier) in 2010, Wang (Bringuier) in 2015, Tiberghien (Roth) in 2022, and Poizat (Menezes) in 2024.

Other works for piano left hand, several of which were commissioned by Wittgenstein, include:

Other works and performances:

Albums:

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

Film and Stage

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