A Must-Read for Every Concerned Member of the Human Species

books:

	• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Jared Diamond Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005 - 575 pages average customer review:based on 444 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Who determine our fate?

After the magnum opus Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond releases the follow-up Collapse, in which he uses a comparative analysis to show why some societies collapse while some others succeed. Although the complexity of the issue makes Diamond's analyses not consistently persuasive, still the book is among the most informative in this area, taking into account of its detailed evidence, scientific methodology, and multidisciplinary approaches.

To investigate the collapse of societies, Diamond employs a five-point framework of possible factors: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and the society's responses to its environmental problems. He thereafter contrasts past collapsed societies with survived ones. Their different fate is partly attributed to the environmental differences i.e. some environments are more fragile than the others. A highlight here is the statistical analyses between the degree of deforestation on 81 Pacific islands and 9 physical variables. The statistical model predicted that the Easter Island should be among the worst deforested while Tikopia Island should be much more sustainable, which agrees with what actually happened. However, Diamond is not an environmental or geographical determinist. He lays particular emphasis on the societies' types of economy, values, and their response to environmental problems. It is exemplified by the story of Norse and Inuit, who shared the fragile Greenland, but held different values. Their fate was also diverged: the Norse Greenland died while the Inuit are still living in the island.

The collapse of the Norse Greenland illustrates an essential theme of the book: the fate of one society is largely determined by its choice whether to cling to traditional values or to change. The Greenland Norse refused to "jettison part of their identity as a European, Christian, pastoral society" and as a result, they died. In contrast, Tikopia Islanders survived because they did not cling to their traditional values e.g., they abandoned raising ecologically destructive pigs even though the pigs were important as the only large domestic animal and the principal status symbol.

Diamond's five-point framework to explain the failure or success of past societies is convincing. However, considering his objective is to tell contemporary societies what they should learn from the history and thereafter take favorable measures to achieve success, the crux becomes whether the parallels between the past and the present are appropriate. According to Diamond, their most obvious difference is that much more people are living in our planet today, retaining much more potent technology that impacts the environment. Thus, the risks for us today become higher. In addition, globalization could prompt the risks to become worldwide decline instead of in isolation collapse just like the case of Easter Island. Therefore, Diamond claims that the collapse of past societies is relevant to the modern world, which is in fact at higher risks. However, he overlooks that all of the past societies that he investigated are founded on agriculture, but the present societies are greatly relying on industry. They are entirely different in that agriculture is susceptible to climate change and environmental degradation while industry is relatively insensitive to these conditions. Hence it is debatable to make parallels between the past and the present societies.

Nevertheless, modern societies could learn from the past because environmental problems have been undermining the quality of our life. Furthermore, the choice of values is still important for us to solve the problems and perhaps will influence our fate. An example is about China, which he calls the "lurching giant" and is besieged by severe environmental problems. Because of China's large population and economy, its environmental problems will not be restricted to domestic issues but will affect the whole world. More importantly, if China finally reaches First World levels, our earth will be definitely overburdened. However, no other countries have a right to prevent its economic development. Thus, the contradiction may ultimately evolve into a political issue. This case favors Diamond's claim that we cannot solve our problems without a change in human values, which agrees with the principle of "the Tragedy of the Commons".

In the concluding section, Diamond explains why some societies make decisions that appear to be obviously self-destructive. "What did the Easter Islander say when he was cutting down the last palm tree in the island?" "We will find substitutes for wood."? Or: "This is my property. I can do whatever I want!"? Or: "Sorry, but I really need a canoe."? Diamonds prefers answering this with "landscape amnesia," which refers to the failure of people to perceive the gradual change surrounding them. "No one would have noticed the falling of the last little palm sapling." Failure to perceive a problem, together with failure to anticipate it, failure to solve it, or failure even to try to solve it, comprises the road map of bad decision-making.

Undoubtedly, not everyone agrees with Diamond's viewpoints. Opposition has been directed against some of his foundations. Such oppositions is exemplified by Jennifer Marohasy, who disagreed with his claim that Australian land is unproductive, and it has been irreversibly damaged. In addition, the book is a slightly redundant in some chapters e.g., the story about the Norse Greenland. However it is still an enlightening book. Diamond's broad knowledge and plain writing style should prompt the public to take serious action in response to environmental problems.

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A Must-Read for Every Concerned Member of the Human Species

Diamond does an excellent job of describing some compelling theories regarding the decline and extinction of past human societies. Diamond digs through history and evidence to come to the consistent theme for all societies that have vanished - overpopulation. It is a problem we see playing out today in many poor countries (Haiti, many African nations, etc). Yet it is the third-rail, the elephant in the room, the topic we dare not speak about because it brings to mind taboo subjects such as the communist regime in China. The reality is that unless we control the world's population, there will a time in the very near future when we simply cannot provide for all of the world's population. The Earth is made up of finite resources and humans, like a cancer, are eating away at the very basic resources that make our planet what it is. In an era where longevity in the modern world is commonplace, rather than the anomaly that it was just 100 years ago, we are quickly laying the groundwork for our own extinction. This is a theme that Diamond makes throughout the book and does so quite well. Using examples from past civilizations (the Mayans, Easter Island, etc), Diamond puts the puzzle pieces together to explain exactly how overpopulation and the decimation of natural resources caused these populations to basically go extinct. I wish every high school made this book required reading, because it definitely changed the way I think about society, our resources, and how human society should work. If more people read this book, we might be able to save the Earth from the looming disaster that is beginning to look inevitable.

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MORE THAN AN COLLAPSE

INTERESTING INSIGHTS ON OUR ENVIRONMENT AND HOW IT WILL EFFECT US ALL. THOSE WHO THINK WE HAVE NO "EFFECT" ON OUR CLIMATE THIS BOOK IS A MUST READ, AND FOR THOSE WHO THINK IT DOES NOT MATTER...THE END IS NEAR MY BROTHER AND SISTER, THE END IS NEAR...(WELL AT LEAST NOT WEEK OR NEXT MONTH..)

One of the most significant books of our time

This book summarizes the effects of 5 factors causing or contributing to the collapse of more than 7 societies in the past, the success of some and the potentials for future collapses including that of the US. It lists some reasons for optimism, and reasons for pessimism. The five factors analyzed are over use of resources causing environmental damage, climate change exacerbating environmental damage, hostile neighbors, cultural values and attitudes that limited adaption to changing circumstances, and population growth. The descriptions of the societies and their histories are very interesting, the analysis is objective, supported by evidence and for the most part supported by science, archeology and history. As a practicing forester and ecologist for more than 40 years, I consider this book is a must for anyone, liberal or conservative, who is concerned about the future they are bequeathing to their children and grand children.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe?one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.

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