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Like his best-selling earlier book, "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond has written a long, dense, often repetitive book that is nonetheless both fascinating and informative.In "Collapse," Diamond offers lessons from the failures (and less common successes) of past and present societies that have struggled to survive environmental challenges. Sometimes the challenges arise from difficult local conditions, but they are always made worse by societal decisions on the use of resources.Diamond applies the lessons learned to world environmental problems of today and offers insightful conclusions. His chapters on present day issues in China and Australia are particularly informative. Although the read can be slow because of his writing style, it's a book worth taking the time to absorb.
His is not a shrill 'the sky is falling' voice but rather a calm, reasoned story teller.He starts out the book with a long description of Montana. Through his analysis of earlier cultures that have collapsed you learn that nothing is guaranteed to last forever. "Collapse" is one of the most important books you could possibly read in our society today. At first you kind of wonder why is he spending so much time talking about a modern state when you're expecting ancient failed civilizations. If a people and their culture don't make the right decisions, they can fail. Failure means death on an apocalyptic scale. Gradually his point builds, and when you get it, it is profound and effective. We are responsible for our choices and their consequences.
Collapse claims to present a balanced view and while I feel Jared has worked very hard to make his language appear balanced the inescapable conclusion I came away with from Collapse is that we must get our back sides in gear and make significant changes to the way we treat our world if we are going to continue to have a bright future as a species. Put simply READ THIS BOOK TODAY.Then get out there and get to work as its too late for pessimism and we must give our society a rapid makeover if we are to avoid its collapse and make no mistake whatever our differences with the Billions of people we have now in the world today we are all part of one society there is now us and them or here and away anymore. Collapse's views on environmental factors coupled with the work of Walter Jehne convinced me that I needed to devote my time and energy to saving the world and when I was asked to step up as a diplomat I founded [.]. as a not for profit using the same techniques that I have laid out in my book Stone Soup: The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing and both in weforest and stone soup I have used soem of the vital lessons I learned form collapse.
Diamond does an excellent job of describing some compelling theories regarding the decline and extinction of past human societies. 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. 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.
It is a problem we see playing out today in many poor countries (Haiti, many African nations, etc). This is a theme that Diamond makes throughout the book and does so quite well. Diamond digs through history and evidence to come to the consistent theme for all societies that have vanished - overpopulation.
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. 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.
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. If more people read this book, we might be able to save the Earth from the looming disaster that is beginning to look inevitable.
Their fate was also diverged: the Norse Greenland died while the Inuit are still living in the island. Thus, the contradiction may ultimately evolve into a political issue. 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. "What did the Easter Islander say when he was cutting down the last palm tree in the island." "We will find substitutes for wood.".
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. More importantly, if China finally reaches First World levels, our earth will be definitely overburdened. He lays particular emphasis on the societies' types of economy, values, and their response to environmental problems. In addition, globalization could prompt the risks to become worldwide decline instead of in isolation collapse just like the case of Easter Island.
However, Diamond is not an environmental or geographical determinist. Diamonds prefers answering this with "landscape amnesia," which refers to the failure of people to perceive the gradual change surrounding them. 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. It is exemplified by the story of Norse and Inuit, who shared the fragile Greenland, but held different values. He thereafter contrasts past collapsed societies with survived ones. 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.
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. An example is about China, which he calls the "lurching giant" and is besieged by severe environmental problems. Their different fate is partly attributed to the environmental differences i.e. 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. Undoubtedly, not everyone agrees with Diamond's viewpoints. Therefore, Diamond claims that the collapse of past societies is relevant to the modern world, which is in fact at higher risks. Because of China's large population and economy, its environmental problems will not be restricted to domestic issues but will affect the whole world. However, no other countries have a right to prevent its economic development.
Nevertheless, modern societies could learn from the past because environmental problems have been undermining the quality of our life. Such oppositions is exemplified by Jennifer Marohasy, who disagreed with his claim that Australian land is unproductive, and it has been irreversibly damaged. The Greenland Norse refused to "jettison part of their identity as a European, Christian, pastoral society" and as a result, they died. some environments are more fragile than the others. Furthermore, the choice of values is still important for us to solve the problems and perhaps will influence our fate.
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. 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. Diamond's five-point framework to explain the failure or success of past societies is convincing. In addition, the book is a slightly redundant in some chapters e.g., the story about the Norse Greenland. Or: "Sorry, but I really need a canoe.". 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.
I can do whatever I want.". Or: "This is my property. However it is still an enlightening book. 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. A highlight here is the statistical analyses between the degree of deforestation on 81 Pacific islands and 9 physical variables. Opposition has been directed against some of his foundations.
Thus, the risks for us today become higher. 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. "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. 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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