Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Rating:
Summary: Here's why small societies tend to collapse
Review:

This vast, complex and provocative book eloquently outlines the flip side of California mythology; eight years ago Diamond said societies succeed by good luck, now he says collapse is due to environmental failures.

His example of the Chaco Culture typifies his conclusions; he assumes it was the home of thousands, whereas recent theory says only a handful of people lived there. Instead, Chaco was the site of shrines, just as the Vatican is the site of shrines and not a vast housing complex. People went to Chaco, observed their rites, smashed the pottery jars they brought and went home. Collapse came with the arrival of the kachina religion, and new technologies which helped the puebloans move to river sites where they live to this day.

Californians have long thought of themselves as 25 years ahead of mankind; it's a flattering self-image, but one of folly that is the basis for this book. First, California is too small to be a pattern for the future of mankind; second, Californians are too unimaginative to be anything but a miner's canary for more sensible peoples; third, any economic or social ripples from the collapse of California won't spread much further than Arizona.

He cites Chaco is an example, and Easter Island. He looks for the faults, ignoring the fact there is always a logical rationale when people do wrong. What did the person who cut down the last tree in Easter Island think? They likely thought, with all due respect to current US policies, they were saving their society. Californians, and Diamond, may think they are saving modern America with his analysis.

It's a noble idea, but it's wrong because it ignores the human capacity to adapt. Europe did not thrive after the last ice age due to any innate superiority of its inhabitants; success was due to a wide range of unique circumstances. The trend today is to seek one "magic bullet" to explain complex situations; ecology is merely the latest of a long line of disasters from which mankiond has escaped by the skin of its teeth. Success, as always then, now and in the future, is the combination of millions of individual decisions by people who believe they can succeed by their own merits -- and not by luck.

Many ancient societies collapsed because they were too small; a disaster, of nature or man-made, overwhelmed a group which had no in depth resources to sustain them. When Santorini erupted in 1600 BC, it destroyed a variety of "great" nations that were, in reality, less than the population of many modern suburbs. The recent Asian tsunami shows the impact of a major disaster on relatively small communities; but the overall impact on the stricken nations shows none will collapse. The destruction of Banda Aceh is a tragedy for Banda Aceh, and a hardship for Indonesia, but merely a ripple for Australia and the rest of the world.

California does not represent the future of the world, nor does this book. In the US, a genuine religious revival similar to that of the Chacoans 900 years ago or even England 200 years ago would completely change the future. History is not a "great man" thesis, nor a "great idea" thesis that was in vogue for much of the last century; history is the long term wisdom of crowds.

If you believe in California, a culture of excess success and extravagent failure, this is an interesting and even prophetic book. But if you believe in the incredible complexity of human response to disaster, this book will leave you wanting someone who looks at the wisdom of crowds instead of the folly of individuals.





Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review:
Very thought-provoking, good read. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in anything beyond the end of his or her own nose... My other recommendation is "Can We Live 150 Years?" by M. Tombak. You can have a quick preview of this book at www.starthealthylife.com

Rating:
Summary: Read the book, do the research ,make up your own mind
Review: I’m driven to write a review of this book in response to a couple of reviews who seem to have their knickers in a twist. :)
(Note: key words are “ bigoted white haters” or “Academia-trash”)
Notice that nowhere is anything of substance *in the book* they are supposed to be reviewing addressed.

I would like to point out a readily accessible source that can be used to evaluate the thesis proposed in “Collapse”., that environmental collapse is related to the collapse of societies.

The Icelandic Free State is an almost perfect society to evaluate this hypothesis. We know when the society was founded, have written records covering almost the entire period and it’s isolated from European culture for all practical purposes. Read “Collapse”, then read about the Free State. Look at how Icelandic society and economy changed according to changes in natural resources. The question is not whether the reader *likes* the results, but do observations match the hypothesis. The hypothesis (very generally speaking) is that environmental
collapse leads to societal collapse. The book then presents observations to support that thesis. There are nearly always problems when trying to write a popular book covering such a broad and complicated thesis.

The reader doesn’t have to believe me or the author or any reviewer. The data is public record for the most part, available at any public or university library.

While I may disagree with some of the details, overall I agree with the thesis. Environmental collapse leads to societal collapse. Which is neither a pro environmental nor anti business stance. Frankly, both sides of that argument are mush-for-brains. For years “business” fought the introduction of ‘environmentally friendly cleaners’ to replace the old petrochemical cleaners. After they were forced to accept them . . .they found the new cleaners were cheaper, better and easier to use. And workers didn’t get sick using them. Productivity and profits went up.

OTOH, some rabid environmentalists seem to feel that business is their natural enemy, without realizing that a subsistence society has neither the leisure nor the free capital to *think* about the environment, let alone work to preserve it. If it’s a choice between starving or eating the last great auk . . . Only rich societies can afford to worry about the environment.

Read the book, do the research make up your own mind.

Rating:
Summary: Deep
Review: In Collapse, Jared Diamond has successfully examined the thousands of year of human history, by evaluating many of the great civilizations that went extinct due to their inability to recognize the limits of their resources and the strength of the forces of nature. The failures of those ancient and modern societies especially in Africa and Asia, as well the Easter Island and Greenland stemmed from the fact that they were compromised by their environment through disasters that were either natural or induced.

In this well-researched book, Diamond wrote of eco-disasters and the depletion of environmental resources through unsustainable measures as the principal causes of the demise of those societies. Not only that, he mentioned some societies that that have solved their ecological problems and succeeded. Nevertheless, the overriding point Diamond made is that in this age of globalization, societies must take collective actions to avoid the collapse of the world's highly interdependent global economy, since it is fast approaching its unsustainable level. This book is a wake up call for the world to develop sustainable sources of energy that does not compromise the environment. Hydrogen cars, solar energy etc should be things for the immediate tomorrow.

The lesson is clear. Those societies that can adapt their ways of life to be in line with the potentials of their environment last while those societies that abuse their resources ultimate commit suicide, and so fail. Now, for the first time in human history, modern technology, global interdependence and international cooperation have provided us with the means and opportunity to judiciously use our resource and prevent their depletion not only from a small scale, but from a global scale as well. It is only by harnessing this new knowledge to sustain our planet, that we shall avoid the fate of self-destruction, like several great societies before us.

Also recommended: OVERSHOOT, DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE

Rating:
Summary: The End Of The World
Review: It's the end of the world as we know it - well soon enough. Every civilization rise and eventually fall. Collapse does a good job of explaining reasons based on environment & ecology why this happens. Until then, however, let's just have a good time, watch War of the Worlds (a theory that was not included in Collapse) and read The System by Roy Valentine (a fun book that show how to make society a better place to live - while we're here).

Rating:
Summary: Ignore at Your Children's Peril
Review: Jared Diamond's "Collapse" describes a series of societies that have failed, and attempts to find a common theme among those failures. Easter Island and the Norwegian colony in Greenland; the more recent genocide in Rwanda. Small societies and more complex ones, ancient and modern, he tries to identify common threads.

He also identifies societies with equally limited resources that have adapted to their environment and succeeded. Iceland, Papua New Guinea and Japan. He contrasts those successes with the failed societies to test his hypotheses.

While many reviewers have characterized this book as the "flip-side" of "Guns, Germs and Steel," I think it is more accurate to view it as an extension of that book, and examination of what happens to societies who start off with the conditions and natural resources that allow them to succeed, as those resources are consumed.

Some reviewers - and I'm afraid I must question whether they have actually read the book - dismiss Diamond's hypotheses as "academic trash." I think they do so at their peril. Diamond's observations and conclusions should give any thinking Westerner pause. It is inarguable that our present pattern of resource consumption is unsustainable, as Diamond demonstrates. The only issue is the consequences of that reality. In disturbing ways, those who blindly criticize this book demonstrate Diamond's point.

Diamond has also been criticized for being simplistic. That's a criticism that is made of every science writer who attempts to write for a wider audience than academia. Diamond's intended audience is not prepared for von Thunen circles or Spenglerism. It is true that Diamond has simplified matters a bit, but that's significant only if Diamond, in his attempt to make his writing accessible, distorts the facts. I suggest that, for the most part, Diamond's explanations are accurate.

I have a few minor quibbles: for example, he suggests that post-ice age hunters exterminated North America's megafauna. Recent research indicates that many of those species were in steep decline long before humankind arrived in North America, and that hunting, at most, accelerated their disappearance. But that's a quibble.

Diamond describes himself as "cautiously optimistic about our society's ability to recognize the risks we are undertaking and to react correctly and in time. I am much more skeptical. Certainly the current U.S. government calls to mind the Greenland colony chieftains and the Easter Island tribal chiefs, who ignored the evidence of collapse all around them, and succeeded only in making sure they were the last to starve to death.

This is a book of amazing scope. It is superbly written. It has frightening implications for anyone who can see beyond their own immediate self-gratification. It is folly to dismiss these ideas; it is dangerous to ignore them. Your grandchildren will not thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Good, requires thinking
Review: This book is well-done and well-developed but requires thinking, which many people simply do not want to do anymore. A bit of a downer here and there, but good for some great discussion.

Rating:
Summary: //Be warned that
Review: This is a very well argued book. However it falls short in one critical respect. The appendix is very thin and does not include precise definitions on some of the most vital terms. Get this book; however be sure to check out www.answers.com a google like website that will provide you with multiple encyclopedia entries of the loaded terminology that is often used in this text. Answers.com is free and immediatly provides definitions of "think rack" and other odd arkana that this book will often conjur up. Again a good book overall.

Rating:
Summary: Collapse
Review: Why do societies collapse? Usually because millions of common trash stop believing in the very things that made their societies successful in the first place, and start believing the hype of bigoted white haters like Jared Diamond instead.