"In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability." - Jared Diamond
I bought the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed over a year ago (it's by Jared Diamond - same author who wrote 'Guns, Germs, and Steel': very well researched, by the way) and I finally had time to read it, and just finished it. I've only read it once, so my opinion on it is pretty worthless right now, and I admit I skimmed a few chapters.
The thesis is very interesting. Diamond is going to talk about how societies live or die: pretty important, huh? What do we care about when it comes to our society's survival? Technological advancement? The biggest, baddest weapons? Technological sophistication in general? Should we get the values that third-world nations have instead? Should we try to get rid of European culture, since it's lead to near-global subjugation?
Societies die because they neglect the environment. I disagree. To show where I'm coming from I'll focus on 2 examples.
1. Consider Easter Island, an island in the southeastern Pacific. Is its culture dying? If so, why? Diamond thinks its because its natural resources (minerals, forests, water, etc . . .) are being used up and that the place is getting overpopulated. But the evidence doesn't support this. Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt got some soil samples from the island and found out how old they were through Radiocarbon dating. The dating showed that the island didn't have anyone on it until 200 to 800 years after Diamond's thesis requires. There hasn't been people there long enough for Diamond's theory to be plausible.
2. Consider Greenland. What happened to Viking society? Diamond claims that the Vikings were racist against the Inuit, and that this meant that the Vikings weren't open to different Inuit ideas that would have kept them from starving. This lead the Vikings to have an agriculture that wasn't good enough to feed them. But Viking scholarship doesn't support this at all. They say the Viking diet switched from farm to marine food. So, the Vikings didn't need to get fishing lessons from the primitive Inuit to survive. The Vikings weren't just agrarian.
The Vikings died off - according to scholars - because of the mini-ice-age (known from tree rings and core samples), and how that made the Vikings switch their diet back to farm foods (which didn't grow well anymore because of the ice-age), and because the Inuit killed off a lot of the Vikings because they were competing to get that marine diet.
That's just a few. But this isn't to say the book is all bad. It's actually very, very good. I actually liked it better than GGS. Remember the opening quote? He looks at a bunch of societies, past and present, and finds out how the societies collapsed, and finds out what the input variables are. There are 8 of them. Cutting down forests. Problems with soil. Problems with water. Too much hunting. Too much fishing. How new species interfere with native species' way of living. Too much reproduction. Impact of overpopulation. He goes into how any combinations of these factors made a society collapse in the past.
For future societies, there are 4 input variables: man-made global warming (hmmmm), too much toxins in the environment, not enough energy, too much human tampering with Nature's ability to use photosynthesis.
The book is divided into 4 sections. Section 1 focuses on Montana; section 2, on past societies; section 3, on modern societies; and section 4, Diamond gives us some ideas on how to help our society from not dying.
There is no doubt that Diamond is an original thinker, a clear, analytical writer, who makes very good arguments, who has done very affective (even if neglectful in some areas) research. Get ready to take a tour through time, into all sorts of societies, learn their ways, and at least read a very interesting theory as to why they died. You'll also get acquainted with mainstream social-science models that help you understand a society, diagnose and organize the problems of a society, and finally give the medicine for the society's survival. Diamond writes very lucidly, and the dry parts are seasoned with a subtle sense of humor that makes for an interesting read throughout.
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