May 6, 2020

In the disorienting days of corona quarantine, wouldn’t it be dope to have a model that can help you make sense of the world? Enter the adaptive cycle from the field of systems ecology — arguably the most important framework you never heard of. Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they give a guided tour of the growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization phases of the cycle, and hash out how it can be applied to the modern world. By the end of the tour, besides having a useful lens for interpreting humanity’s predicament, you’ll be quite confident in assessing which phase is represented by a koala with a flaming fanny.

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Show Notes

• Summary of the adaptive cycle
• Chapter 9 of The Community Resilience Reader is “A Crash Course in the Science of Resilience” by Brian Walker and David Salt.
• The four phases of the adaptive cycle
• “Navigating the Adaptive Cycle: an Approach to Managing the Resilience of Social Systems”
• Joseph Tainter’s book The Collapse of Complex Societies
• Bill Rees offers the perspective of a systems ecologist on our growth-focused society and the current predicament with COVID-19.