Dodos: Adapt or Decline

One of Charles Darwin’s less famous utterances, but no less germane was: “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

I confess to being vulnerable to the lure of nostalgia. I liked the world I grew up in with no cell phones. I liked leaving my desk late in the afternoon and letting the leftover issues of the day simmer until the next morning when I once again tackled them one by one. That included listening to voice messages on my tape recorder that had sat there overnight, deciding whether any of them deserved a response the next morning.

I liked watching sports on TV without having to pay to view this game or that game. I liked checking the newspaper to see what movies were playing and going to watch my choice on the big screen, instead of having to pay hundreds in annual subscription fees to streaming services to watch what I want.

One of my favorite times of the day was sitting down with the newspaper of my choice for a quiet read. Now I have to pay more for that newspaper than I would a digital copy that smothers me with video ads, starting my day with agitation rather than the “quiet read.”

All that being said, who wants to go the way of the Dodo bird, which means that as the world changes, we need to adapt. Extending this analogy to our nation, if we don’t adapt, our leadership in the world economically and strategically may inevitably fail.

There are political ramifications to this notion of adaptation. Politically, the past will often feel and sound better than what’s novel and unfamiliar. This has become an increasingly difficult political Catch-22 for conservative policymakers, trapped by two contradictory and novel conditions. Let me explain.

Immigration is a political enigma. It goes something like this: Can’t live with them (cultural clashes); can’t live without them (population replenishment and labor). Springfield, Ohio has been a focal point in the news recently because of the number of Haitian immigrants. Let’s leave out the fantasy of who’s eating whose pet dogs and cats.

Springfield suffered like many other small and large towns when manufacturing jobs went to places in Japan, South Korea and China. It takes innovation to come back from changes like that.

The community is divided between those who want the city to go back to the way things were, without the challenging economic circumstances, cultural and language differences, and those agents of change who see the surge in young workers willing to partake in the city’s potential rebound in manufacturing. Those who want things the way things were, bemoan the immigrant pressures on city services. Those who want to adapt see a young labor force, increased tax revenues to pay for changing services and infrastructure and hope for a new path to a new future for a city that was struggling with a loss of jobs and a shrinking population. It’s a tough situation, but turning obstacles into opportunities is what’s made this country great and a world leader.

Not to beat a dead horse, but climate change is another example. Those who insist on sticking their heads in the sand aren’t helping the nation to adapt. Getting to carbon net neutral is essential to positioning the planet for survival. Waiting, lingering or worse yet, just hoping the past decades of warming trends were just a fluke is a strategy that writes the epitaph of our demise.

Broadening this strategic notion of adapt or lag behind, I was struck by an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine this month by General Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. It is a fascinating study of how the nature of warfare is changing, highlighting the war in Ukraine as an example, but also how technology could change possible future encounters with China in the Asian Pacific. It seems like a take-off on “The Matrix,” but a future war in which drones predominate, robots are key to ground offenses and robotic dogs control and hold urban populations in check, are no longer part of Hollywood fiction or the Isaac Asimovs, Ray Bradburys, Gene Roddenberry or Frank Herberts of the literary world. Milley and Schmidt warn us that we are lagging behind in this new world of drones, robots and wartime algorithms. We spend more money by far in the world on our military and defense, but it won’t work for our future if we are spending on the catapults of the past. One thousand drones is a pittance in cost compared to a multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier, yet these inexpensive drones could sink that prized dreadnought weapon of past wars.

I am eternally grateful to have grown up in a world without cell phones, video games and recurring 100-year floods and droughts, but that nostalgia doesn’t satisfy the need to adapt to survive. Maybe it’s just a fluke that Hillsboro is having its worst drought in 130 years, limiting Hillsboro, according to our city’s water treatment superintendent, to an 80-day water supply. My well’s dry and I’m adding a 5,000-gallon cistern to my current 2,000-gallon cistern as a buffer against future shortages.

Over time, Dodo birds’ wings devolved due to a lack of predators on a remote island. Change in the island’s habitat brought on new predators. Unable to adapt quickly enough, they became some thing’s lunch.

As a city, state, and nation, we need to keep flying, in spite of changing circumstances. That means we need leadership that is responsive to change.

Bill Sims is a Hillsboro resident, retired president of the Denver Council on Foreign Relations, an author and runs a small farm in Berrysville with his wife. He is a former educator, executive and foundation president.