Conscious Adaptation requires that a person is aware of the two options. It is always just two. The first option is always the status quo, and the second option is always the impetus to not do the status quo anymore. There might be twenty different ways to not do the status quo, but they only become relevant if the decision to change has been made. All debate and argumentation, research and exploration as to which is the best option to take in order to move forward is nothing more than various ways of avoiding making the choice to adapt. It does not take too much life experience to know that when the choice to adapt is made, we will make anything work. At the societal level, the group mind, this is why revolution has almost always been violent.

Revolution is Unconscious Adaptation.

Cultural differences and modern advanced technology.

It was a while ago when I watched the Chinese send their first astronauts to their space station, Tiangong, in Shenzhou 12. About that same time Space X was sending astronauts up to the ISS on its Falcon 9 rocket. The difference was stark.

In the Space X capsule, Dragon, the astronauts sat towards the front of the capsule with a bank of screens and controls in front of them, while in the Chinese capsule the astronauts sat against the back wall with cargo packed around them; no controls or screens at all. During the preparation before liftoff, the Americans busied themselves hitting buttons and doing things, while their Chinese counterparts sat patiently and followed along with the process in a booklet they had. I could not help but think that what I was seeing was a difference between the past and the future.

The reality of modern space travel is that there are no pilots, only passengers, and some cultures are more ready to accept this,.. and take advantage of this. I am fairly certain engineering a space mission with only passengers is far easier than engineering a space mission with astronauts who want to feel like they have some control. Or, to juxtapose the same situation into the car industry, the American car industry is getting clobbered globally because they are still designing cars intended to give the owner the sense that they might be able to fix and work on them. All the other car companies have dropped any pretense at designing cars the average person could even hope to understand, let alone work on,.. and that makes them more efficient and successful.

To me, this is the moment of conscious adaptation. Do we cling to the need to feel like we have control, or do we move forward?