It is also clear, as the busy-building weavers remind us, that while success or failure in the energy quest will always shape the evolutionary trajectory of any species, many hard-to-explain animal traits and behaviors may well have been shaped by the seasonal overabundance of energy rather than the battle for scarce resources, and that in this may lie a clue as to why we, the most energy-profligate of all species, work so hard.

Foraging may be much less productive and generate far lower energy yields than farming but it is also much less risky. This is firstly because foragers tended to live well within the natural limits imposed by their environments rather than skate perpetually on its dangerous verges, and secondly because where subsistence farmers typically relied on one or two staple crops, foragers in even the bleakest environments relied on dozens of different food sources and so were usually able to adjust their diets to align with an ecosystem’s own dynamic responses to changing conditions. Typically, in complex ecosystems when weather one year proves unsuitable for one set of plant species, it almost inevitably suits others. But in farming societies when harvests fail as a result of, for example, a sustained drought, then catastrophe looms.

Competition exists all over nature—being the Alpha is a big deal, competing in mating and survival cycles can be understood as natural. In the absence of reasoning, it appears to be a viable way to manage community power dynamics. Humans are unique because we compete when it isn’t necessary. We could reason our way to more sustainable processes, but we use our intelligence to outsmart each other. We compete for fun, for ego.

A very powerful resource position produces profit without great effort, and it is human nature that the easy life breeds laxity. It is also human nature to associate current profit with recent actions, even though it should be evident that current plenty is the harvest of planting seasons long past.

PART 8: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

32: Ambiguity is a Feature, Not a Bug

“Adaptation with selection, the basic mechanism of evolution, is the process through which collective intelligence develops and the means by which successful firms find products and business processes appropriate to the needs of their customers. Disciplined pluralism, which allows freedom to experiment but is quick to end unsuccessful experiment, is inseparable from economic progress.