Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed | Jared Diamond

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed | Jared Diamond | Recommended

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Collapse: How Soci...

	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Jared Diamond Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005 - 592 pages average customer review:based on 405 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The View From Olympus Is Not Always Inspiring

The professed intent of this work is the establishment of an algorithm of survival, so to speak, based upon a close look at societies that didn't survive, for the most part. Quite quickly it becomes clear to the reader that cultural/ecological collapse is real but not so readily managed. As the author himself admits, one wonders what was on the mind of the man who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island. And yet this is an intriguing book, well researched, restrained for the most part, taking us to places and times we rarely think about to grasp the reality of how fragile our way of life really is. Along the way is the troubling discovery that yesterday, like today, man is his own worst enemy.

Diamond's anthology does make a case that the entire planet is in trouble. But this author is meticulous and respectful: he succeeds in giving the reader a feel for local communities and regions, dissecting aspects of economy, geography, religion and human behaviors where people had real choices and made less inspired ones. One sees that similar processes are at work today in disparate parts of world, from Montana to Australia. I for one will forever feel guilty about broiling orange roughy on the Fridays of Lent.

To give the reader some sense of his method, Diamond opens his works with a lengthy essay on the present day State of Montana. Big Sky Country is in trouble, though some folks in the Mountain Time Zone may bristle at his take on a state which has a reputation, at least, for self-sufficiency. The author calmly torpedoes a number of Montana's beliefs and practices, observing that were it a free standing nation, it would fall into Third World status. Diamond outlines a Montanan natural algorithm: its cool, dry, somewhat windy climate on the leeward side of mountains led settlers to seek an economy below the surface, where the state's only true industrial aged wealth resided--in mining. Diamond examines the relentless poisoning of Montana's land and water as a variety of natural toxins, set free in the mining process, began a century of steady leeching.

The human expression of the survival algorithm comes into play in Montana quite vividly. For a number of reasons many citizens of the state resist government efforts to organize anything like zoning or greening. Centralization is political poison, a curious state of affairs for a state that gets a 150% return on its federal tax dollar. But Montana is hardly alone in its quirky thinking. Vikings on the verge of starvation in thirteenth century Greenland make considerable donations to the papal Crusade tax. Why people make the decisions they do is the one question Diamond never quite nails down with the precision of his other observations. Perhaps the best overriding definition of our global problems can be defined as "contemporary self interest." Just as Santayana warned of the dangers of not looking back, the author raises our awareness of looking toward the future.

Although he traces nearly a dozen past and present civilizations, I found the lengthy tale of the Norsemen particularly compelling. The Vikings, having settled modern Scandinavia, began a near millennium of westward settlement. Iceland, with its climate and vegetation, was just marginal enough for permanent survival. The Viking settlement of Vinland, on the North American continent, ultimately broke down because warlike mannerisms were ultimately quashed by indigenous Indians. Greenland, however, was a slow and painful death of nearly five hundred years, where climate, technology, topography and hardheadedness eventually doomed a lengthy effort to colonize the great island. Diamond observed that the true tragedy of Greenland was the Norsemen's failure to learn from a surviving neighbor, the Inuit, who had mastered the boating, weaponry, and dietary limitations of the territory.

This is not "Inconvenient Truth" tree hugging polemic. Rather than trumpet one big problem, the author dissects many overlooked smaller ones of the past, and sets them alongside similar potential strategies of the present day, in some cases species by species. In recent years I have developed a taste for Orange Roughy, a fish mass marketed in US shopping clubs. Diamond observes that most of the world's roughy is a product of the waters off Australia and New Zealand. Recent studies have found that this species does not begin to reproduce until the age of 40, and that most captured roughy is nearly a century old. At these numbers its reproduction will reduce exponentially [406]. Thus I am a kinsman of the last logger on Easter Island, grilling the last roughy on the patio.

Roughy may seem like small potatoes, pardon the dietary allusion, but it is a good paradigm for more vital matters of fresh water, soil, food production, toxic waste, energy, and population. [Curiously, "global warming" is not a dominating theme of current day life problems, a sobering fact in itself.] Diamond discusses several international industry practices, particularly in matters of logging rain forests and drilling for oil. He devotes a chapter to "first world yuppies" who would dismiss his concerns as alarmist, again with a disarming humor--nobody has ever criticized a town for maintaining a fire house, he observes, if the town has but a few fires a year. [510]

I do not know if Diamond is conversant with the writings of St. Augustine, the notably pessimistic Christian philosopher of the fifth century. At the risk of extremely generous paraphrasing, Augustine contended then that mankind is, religion notwithstanding, inherently flawed and selfish. Diamond does not say this directly, but his body of work does not make a liar of Augustine. Diamond's concern is not just that men are selfish and narrow sighted, but that there are a lot more men today, with more technology to do more questionable things. Perhaps prayer need be added to the algorithm of survival.

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Recommended

Very thought-provoking, good read. The author presents factors that lead to a society's demise, and also illuminates several factors making our own future perilous. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in anything beyond the end of his/her own nose. I enjoy Dimond's writing style. He communicates his thoughts clearly and in an easy-to-understand way.

More reading: The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology)

Interesting and well documented. A GREAT READ!!!

I really enjoyed reading this book. I must admit I mostly read fiction, so I cannot compare this book to other writings, but I found the book well-written and easy to understand.

The author gives a bunch of examples to illustrate and justify his arguments and tells us dozens of stories to complement his ideas. The book is quite long but I rarely got bored while reading it. There is always an interesting detail to focus on and keep turning pages.

The books covers different past and present societies as examples to illustrate various factors influencing a tendency for a society to collapse. Easter Island, Vikings, Rwanda (genocide), Dominican Republic and Haiti and Polynesian Islands are among them.

I found the last part of the book a bit less convincing and harder to follow. The author describes his concerns about mines, forests, fishing,... and some parts seem endless.

Anyway, most of the book is great and I think everyone should have a look at it.

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Interesting read

Jared Diamond provides some interesting thoughts, and provides the background to support his ideas and concepts. Allows the reader to thinlk through the individual issues - what set up the fall, what was happening in the environment (human, political, etc.), and did they see it coming.
Thought provoking - a good read. Wish all the political candidates would read this - it might change some of their thought processes.

Okay

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond utilizes the comparative method to examine key factors that have contributed to the collapse of previous societies in comparison with current threats and opportunities facing modern day societies. In his book, Diamond defines a societal collapse as, "a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political, economic, or social complexity; over a considerable area, for an extended time."
In his examination of past societies, Diamond acknowledges a set of environmental factors and human reactions to these factors as the driving forces of their collapse. One example he elaborates on is the complete deforestation of Easter Island and its effects on the cultural practices of its people. In his review of modern day societies such as the United States and China, Diamond recognizes technological advancements, globalization, modern medicine and having a greater understanding of past societies as factors that may place these societies at lower risk for collapse.
Conversely however, Diamond also points out that for the first time in history we are facing the risk of a global decline. Issues such as global warming and overpopulation are not isolated to specific societies. Furthermore, as technology allows us to continue to become connected with one another across international boundaries, there will soon be little chance for a society to collapse in seclusion.
Diamond offers two generic solutions to preventing a collapse of a modern society: 1) to employ long term planning for the future that incorporates making bold, anticipatory decisions on problems at a time when they are perceived but have not yet reached crisis proportions, and 2) to restructure our individual value systems as a society to accommodate to the changes anticipated for the future.
Throughout this book, Diamond utilizes traditional methods of examining the past in order to better prepare for the future. Insights and information on past societies are discussed, and readers are offered a point of view to invoke for thinking about the future. However, specific suggestions for thinking about the future are lacking, and no new knowledge or ideologies are presented in this book. Examples of how modern societies of all levels of development are changing as a result of rapid technological, environmental, or cultural change are also very thin, which may be disappointing to the reader. However, those with strong interests in history or anthropology would probably still enjoy reading this book.
Lauren Tomatani

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