Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

[godfry n. glad]

I'm three quarters the way through Jared Diamond's latest tome, entitled the same as the thread title here.

This book is, in my estimation, far more interesting than his Guns, Germs and Steel and is filled with scads of interesting points and details from human/environment interactions throughout the world and throughout time. He covers a wide variety of instances of societal collapse and contrasts them with societies which have succeeded in averting collapse, as well as some candidates for collapse in the modern world.

Using modern western Montana and it's impending environmental problems as a starting point, Diamond surveys past societies of Easter Island, Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the Anasazi and their neighbors, the Mayan empire, and the various communities of the Viking expansion, with a focus on the collapse of Viking Greenland. For success stories amongst past societies, he uses the New Guinea highlands, Tokugawa Japan and Tikopia.

Amongst modern societies, he uses Rwanda as an example of Malthusian collapse, contrasts the Hispanola nations of Haiti and Dominican Republic, the awakening giant of China, and the fragile environment of Australia as exemplars of his concerns.

Evidently, he wraps his thesis up with some speculations as to why some societies succeed, while others collapse, evidently with a very strong emphasis upon human choices and their consequences.

I'm presently at the beginning of his chapter on Australia, so I'm looking forward to his reflections upon his collected data. I shall be disheartened when I get to the end because it will mean a superlative reading experience will be over (he does include 30 pages worth of "further reading" suggestions, so if any one of the examples intrigues, the reader can readily find more fodder for thought).

Has anyone else read this book? If so, are there any comments? Critiques?

[livius drusus]

I haven't read it (yet), but I've seen some interesting discussions of it. Salon (requires subscription or day pass) has an interview with Diamond (http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/) from when Collapse came out that you might enjoy. I found his comments on environmental issues and business particularly interesting, and surprisingly optimistic.

[godfry n. glad]

I've a friend who'd noted the same thing...Diamond's hope. Yet, she has no such hope. I haven't finished the book, so I've yet to reach his o'erreaching conclusions, but from what I've seen so far, I'd say that hope is fiercely cribbed with very strong doubts. His sections on Hispanola and China are downright depressing....particularly China.

I'm more interested in what others have to say, rather than addendums by Diamond. I'll have to look around, but I thought perhaps those erudite members of this esteemed board might be able to carry a discussion. But it looks as though not too many others here have even read it.

:qsigh:
:godfry:

[BracesForImpact]

I haven't read it, although I'd like to. Since you recommend it I might pick it up. I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel, well except for the plants chapters. I needed some coffee for that part, even though it was important to the book as a whole.

[fragment]

I just finished Guns, Germs, and Steel, I think I'll be looking out for Collapse now that you've brought it up. Seems you're a bit ahead of the play here, so you might be out of luck if you want to get down and dirty with specifics on this book... but if you want to throw some general discussion questions out I'll be interested.

[PixyMisa]

I saw Collapse at the newsagent last night, and was curious about it. I wasn't that impressed with Guns, Germs and Steel, because it seemed to me that Diamond was pushing his hypothesis harder than the evidence really supported. From these comments it sounds like he's doing the same thing with Collapse.

You might be intrigued by this earlier article by Diamond (http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html), a quite bizarre rant against agriculture. He calls it "the worst mistake in human history", which seems odd, since it is the foundation of all civilisation.

[Blake]

I saw Collapse at the newsagent last night, and was curious about it. I wasn't that impressed with Guns, Germs and Steel, because it seemed to me that Diamond was pushing his hypothesis harder than the evidence really supported. From these comments it sounds like he's doing the same thing with Collapse.I was extraordinarily impressed with Guns, Germs and Steel, not because of the hypothesis itself (what are you referring to exactly? the hypothesis of geographical determination of civilization--horizontal vs. vertical etc.?), but because it has given me my first framework for "civilized" human history. Before that, I didn't really have a great sense of how man evolved from stone age technology (for the sake of argument, since ca. 100-50,000 years ago) through the recent ice ages into the various accelerating stages of civilization.

You might be intrigued by this earlier article by Diamond (http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html), a quite bizarre rant against agriculture. He calls it "the worst mistake in human history", which seems odd, since it is the foundation of all civilisation.It doesn't strike me as a bizarre rant, given the increasing evils associated with civilization and the reasonable hypotheses that stone age hunter-gatherers were on average healthier, with more free time. True, it's more than likely that if we hadn't embraced agriculture, we would not have developed so quickly our astonishing technology. However, on balance I think our technology does us more harm than good at the moment, and it's impossible in any case to argue counterfactually. We have no idea how our species would have developed up to this point if humans had not (almost) all adopted farming and animal husbandry. Perhaps we would not have developed much past a Neolithiclike level of organization, but in the ideal case, maybe we'd have developed similarly advanced technologies without having multiplied our population so recklessly or evolved such a stratified social order.