"Stafford Beer in his book Platform for Change. Beer talks about social institutions such as 'schooling,'... These are self-organising and self-regulating systems. As their environment changes, how do they not collapse? How are they not sensitive to shock?

Beer says that an ultrastable social institution will do one of three things in response to change:

1. It will change internally and still survive (I guess this is like scouting or soccer, both institutions that have changed minimally).

2. The institution's internal form will change, but its relationships to other institutions will remain. Perhaps this is like prisons, which have the same relationship to the population, police, courts and government... but operate internally very differently.

3. Dramatic change occurs. This makes me think of the Church: it has changed enormously internally and in its external relations over the last millennium, yet it's still the Church."