HarvardXLEAD1x-V007200_DTH

Adaptive Challenges

• Definition: Adaptive challenges refer to the second type of gap that we don't yet know how to close or only partially understand how to narrow.

• Alternative Terms: Sometimes referred to as innovative challenges or transformative pressures, but primarily called adaptive challenges due to insights from nature.

Nature and Adaptive Challenges

• Concept: In nature, adaptive challenges are situations or opportunities that require organisms to build upon existing capacities and develop new ones.

• Selection Pressure: Adaptive challenges favor species that are beginning to develop the needed new capacities. Failure to adapt may lead to extinction.

Human Response to Adaptive Challenges

• Continuous Adaptation: Like species in nature, humans respond to environmental challenges in search of appropriate adaptations to survive and thrive in a dynamic world.

• Definition of Thriving: In nature, thriving equals reproductive success, where species produce many offspring. However, for humans, thriving encompasses broader meanings.

Human Thriving Beyond Reproduction

• Diverse Definitions: Thriving can occur with smaller families or without children, highlighting that it is not solely about physical survival or reproduction.

• Realizing Values: Thriving includes realizing personal or collective values, such as:

  • Engaging in meaningful work.

  • Raising children to be good human beings.

  • Contributing to a more free and just society.

Moral and Spiritual Values

• Self-Defined Challenges: Humans define a range of moral and spiritual values, thus creating new gaps between aspirations and reality that they strive to close.

• Setting Values: The values that individuals and societies choose to pursue help shape the adaptive challenges they face.

Unique Nature of Human Adaptive Challenges

• Internal vs. External: Unlike natural adaptive challenges produced solely by external environmental changes, human challenges also stem from internal values and aspirations.

• Accumulated Wisdom: Over lifetimes and generations, humans glean insights from interpersonal interactions, ancestral knowledge, and sacred texts to identify values worth pursuing.