Civilization as Human Nature: How a Mortal Species Converts Friction into Adaptive Inheritance

This preprint introduces the Adaptive Inheritance Framework, a theoretical model proposing that civilization functions as a distributed system for preserving and transmitting adaptive learning across generations. The framework argues that mortality creates continuity pressure, motivating the development of inheritance systems that reduce adaptive loss through language, institutions, traditions, education, and collective memory.

The model centers on the Adaptive Inheritance Cycle, in which friction generates adaptive information that is transformed through learning, adaptation, memory, and inheritance. Building on insights from cultural evolution, collective memory studies, institutional theory, organizational learning, sociology, and evolutionary thought, the framework proposes that civilizational resilience depends on the effectiveness with which societies convert friction into inherited adaptive capacity.

The manuscript develops the concepts of inheritance capacity, friction processing, prestige alignment, adaptive resonance, and social decoherence; examines historical and institutional examples; proposes testable predictions; outlines conditions for falsification; and presents an agenda for future empirical research.

The framework is offered as a theoretical model intended to stimulate further investigation into how human societies preserve adaptive learning despite the continual loss of individual participants.