Five Foundational Sectors of Civilization
= an Adaptative Cycle analysis
Discussion
Nafeez Ahmed:
"James Arbib and Tony Seba ... categorise the production system of a civilisation into five “foundational sectors”: how we power ourselves (energy), extract and make things (materials), eat (food), get around (transport) and create and share knowledge (information). All these sectors involve harnessing energy to supply a society’s core material needs (Arbib and Seba, 2020).
A civilisation’s “organising system” (OS) determines how these material capabilities are deployed: the knowledge and cultural organisational forms by which those tools are designed, owned, distributed, deployed, regulated and governed. Encompassing models of thought, belief systems, social systems, political systems, economic systems and governance structures which impact ways of thinking, seeing and making decisions, the OS determines whether a civilisation successfully manages the production system, shaping the final design or “phase” of the civilisation. Societies which failed to adapt organisationally to the new material capabilities of their production system and emerging environmental conditions faced collapse, while those that succeeded broke through to new vistas of possibility (Arbib and Seba, 2020). ... A civilisation’s trajectory through the adaptive cycle can be measured using empirical data on the phase transition dynamics across its foundational systems.
...
As foundational technologies scale, they grow exponentially as part of the first growth stage of the adaptive cycle of a society or civilisation. As they saturate the market, they increasingly define the material structure and capabilities of a civilisation. Ultimately, a civilisation’s organising system decisions determine the extent to which it can manage, regulate and distribute the benefits. The system reaches a peak during the second stage of conservation, at which point it reaches a period of homeostasis balancing out positive and negative feedback loops within the system. This equilibrium becomes unbalanced in the context of disruptive forces such as obstructed energy flows, geopolitical perturbations (Ahmed, 2017) or new technologies of production which can potentially outcompete prevailing industries. As the system moves out of equilibrium and enters the third release stage, incumbent industries decline along with the political, economic, cultural, ideological and ethical structures that evolved to manage them. The deepening obsolescence of civilisation’s production-OS nexus clears the way for a new production-OS nexus to emerge in the fourth stage of reorganisation. This final stage either leads the civilisation to degenerate, leading to its collapse or paves the way for a new adaptive cycle. If successful, the new cycle will consist of a completely new system phase, with distinctive rules and properties encompassing both radically new technologies and radically different organising structures"