| What indicators do healthy societies share? (Deduced from 4_02)
A healthy community both sustains (A) and adapts (B):
Sustaining
Under stable conditions, caring effectively for:
- All its members and
- Its habitat
- Sustaining them in stability from generation to generation
Adapting
When social or environmental crises arise, caring for:
- Its members
- By adapting to restore stability
Health can only be determined after the community has successfully adapted to catastrophe.
What Health Is Not
- Long-term survival
- Dominance
Conquest of a community does not indicate failure, nor does extermination indicate failure, since:
- Conquering societies don't meet the criteria for health
- Healthy societies can't resist conquest
- Dominant societies are temporary
This seems contradictory...but any society that survives long enough is ultimately likely to meet its match. We can say a society fails if it is destroyed by its first major catastrophe, but not if it has adapted successfully at least once. |
