'COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED'

Today, The Grandma has been planning the calendars of her upcoming trainings and between planning and planning she has taken some time to finish reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, a very interesting book written by Jared Diamond, the American scientist, historian, and author, that forces you to reflect on our ancient past, on our present, but above all on our future as societies.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive for the British edition, is a 2005 book by academic and popular science author Jared Diamond.

While the bulk of the book is concerned with the demise of these historical civilizations, Diamond also argues that humanity collectively faces, on a much larger scale, many of the same issues, with possibly catastrophic near-future consequences to many of the world's populations.

Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbours, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and the society's response to the foregoing four factors.

The root problem in all but one of Diamond's factors leading to collapse is overpopulation relative to the practicable (as opposed to the ideal theoretical) carrying capacity of the environment. One environmental problem not related to overpopulation is the harmful effect of accidental or intentional introduction of non-native species to a region.

He also lists twelve environmental problems facing humankind today. The first eight have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

-Deforestation and habitat destruction

-Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)

-Water management problems

-Overhunting

-Overfishing

-Effects of introduced species on native species

-Overpopulation

-Increased per-capita impact of people

Further, he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

-Anthropogenic climate change

-Buildup of toxins in the environment

-Energy shortages

-Full human use of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity

Part One describes the environment of the US state of Montana, focusing on the lives of several individuals to put a human face on the interplay between society and the environment.

Part Two describes past societies that have collapsed. Diamond uses a framework when considering the collapse of a society, consisting of five sets of factors that may affect what happens to a society: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and the society's responses to its environmental problems. A recurrent problem in collapsing societies is a structure that creates a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.

The societies Diamond describes are:

-The Greenland Norse (climate change, environmental damage, loss of trading partners, hostile neighbors, irrational reluctance to eat fish, chiefs looking after their short-term interests).

-Easter Island (a society that, Diamond contends, collapsed entirely due to environmental damage)

-The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island (environmental damage and loss of trading partners)

-The Anasazi of southwestern North America (environmental damage and climate change)

-The Maya of Central America (environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbours)

Finally, Diamond discusses three past success stories:

-The tiny egalitarian Pacific island of Tikopia

-The agricultural success of egalitarian central New Guinea

-The forest management in stratified Japan of the Tokugawa-era, and in Germany.

Part Three examines modern societies, including:

-The collapse into genocide of Rwanda, caused in part by overpopulation

-The failure of Haiti compared with the success of its neighbour on Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic

-The problems facing a developing nation, China

-The problems facing a First World nation, Australia

Part Four concludes the study by considering such subjects as business and globalization, and extracts practical lessons for us today. Specific attention is given to the polder model as a way Dutch society has addressed its challenges and the top-down and most importantly bottom-up approaches that we must take now that our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course in order to avoid the 12 problems of non-sustainability that he expounds throughout the book, and reviews in the final chapter. The results of this survey are perhaps why Diamond sees signs of hope nevertheless and arrives at a position of cautious optimism for all our futures.

The second edition contains an Afterword: Angkor's Rise and Fall.

More information: Medium

 We're uncomfortable about considering

history as a science. 
It's classified as a social science, 
which is considered not quite scientific.

Jared Diamond