CONCEPT
Selective Adoption
Diamond's second crisis-navigation factor — the society's capacity to learn selectively from others' experiences without surrendering identity wholesale or refusing to learn at all.
Selective adoption is the middle path between the failure modes that doom civilizations facing environmental change: wholesale imitation of foreign models (which destroys the cultural coherence necessary for institutional continuity) and refusal to learn from others (which maintains identity at the cost of adaptation). Diamond contrasted Meiji Japan, which adopted Western technologies and institutional forms while preserving core cultural continuities, with societies that either refused foreign learning (the Norse) or surrendered identity to imitation. Successful adaptation requires distinguishing between practices that are environmentally contingent — adapted to conditions that no longer exist and must change — and practices that are foundational, reflecting values and capabilities that remain viable regardless of the environment.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The Meiji Japanese case is the paradigmatic example. After Commodore Perry forced Japan open to Western trade in 1853, the Meiji Restoration (1868) undertook one of the most rapid and successful institutional transformations in modern history. Japan systematically adopted Western military organization, industrial production, educational systems, legal codes, and political institutions.