Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

A fascinating look at how different societies have failed, I read this many years ago, but just noticed that Jared Diamond has a new book coming out which reminded me. Years later and I still think of some of the examples from time to time. While this is not a quick or easy read, it was so compelling I never put it down for very long.

Este libro desmonta sistemáticamente los argumentos de aquellos que aún tengan una posición negacionista sobre la crisis medioambiental en la que nos encontramos y nos pone cara a cara con los graves problemas que nos esperan a la vuelta de la esquina, pues son problemas que ya han sufrido con terribles consecuencias sociedades del pasado.

Como libro revelador sobre estos problemas y como despertador de conciencias dormidas tiene un valor innegable.

Sin embargo, tengo un sentimiento ambivalente con los libros de Diamond: por un lado, es una delicia leer sus ensayos excelentemente documentados y que, al menos en mi caso, me descubren datos e ideas muy enriquecedores. Por otro lado, me molesta sobremanera su sesgo de confirmación. Así como en "Armas, gérmenes y acero" el elefante en la habitación era la importancia de figuras individuales que han engrandecido civilizaciones (militar, política, científica y técnicamente) haciéndolas avanzar frente a otras y que contradicen claramente su argumento del determinismo geográfico para el avance de las sociedades, en el caso de Colapso parece increíble que soslaye el influjo en la superpobración de las grandes religiones (creced y multiplicaos) y el desmesurado consumo de proteínas animales frente a dietas vegetarianas en el caso del agotamiento de los suelos y recursos naturales. Además, cuando habla de sociedades devastadas por pueblos invasores también corre un tupido velo sobre las masacres anglosajonas en Sudáfrica, Australia o Estados Unidos.
Creo que a un científico y pensador de cierta talla se le debe exigir un distanciamiento mínimo sobre sus convicciones religiosas y culturales sobre todo, hablando de sociedades comparadas.

3,5*

This would have been a better book at about half the length. Diamond is a devotee of that style that is heavily promoted for oral presentations – say what you are going to say, say it using bullets for emphasis and clarity, and say what you just said by way of summary. The dreaded PowerPoint syndrome, in other words. So, when ploughing through the admittedly interesting and illuminating chapters, I found I was waiting each time for the Five Points That Indicate Society’s Success or Failure, and yes, I was not disappointed, for every chapter has the same structure. Example cascades over example; it’s not that the message is wrong or untimely, but it’s so relentless!

The ultimate point of Collapse is of course to highlight the parallels with our own society and perhaps provide a sort of roadmap for the future. But for all of his conclusions that there is hope for us, he really does not provide much evidence, so the end is a bit of an anticlimax.

Collapse was written before our own latest financial “collapse” in 2008. It would have been interesting to know what Diamond’s thoughts about that were, and I had hoped the epilogue written in that year might have addressed that. But no, the extra pages about Angkor Wat really adds nothing to the book.

Diamond's prior 'Guns, Germs & Steel' addresses the reasons why some peoples in some areas of the world produced civilizations and others didn't. The factors emphasized are material and the subtext is that these factors, not moral or racial inferiority, were decisive.
'Disaster' tells the other side of the story, namely why some cultures and civilizations fail while others succeed. This is done through case studies such as a comparison of Viking Greenland (failure) to the Inuits (success) and Viking Iceland (near failure, current recovery) and Creole Haiti (failure) to the Spanish Dominican Republic (success). There are many other examples, including contemporary Montana, but these are the clearest comparisons.
A common thread of the exemplary failure is that of populations outstripping resources. Another is that of cascading effects once saturation occurs.
While the outlook is bleak, Diamond is at pains to point to success stories and to discuss the means by which good decisions have been and might be made as regards environmentally sustainable practices.

I collapsed after reading this. What a slog. Good, but dense, detailed, and darn long. I don't particularly care for Jared Diamond's writing style. He's detailed, scholarly, and repetitive. There is so much information I had to take frequent breaks and snatch some quick reads in-between chapters. I almost abandoned it a few times but then I'd find a different chapter interesting and get hooked again. Diamond has solid arguments for explaining why societies collapse and while fascinating, he's overly detailed in spots - at least for me. His thesis shows five factors that influence the collapse of a society: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreased support by friendly neighbors, and society's response to environmental problems. The book is full of great information and I can see recommending students to read certain chapters, but not the whole shebang - unless they are persistent readers.

Many of the societies he examines collapsed because of their fragile environments. While Diamond doesn't play judge and is sympathetic toward those who made decisions that were wrong and caused the downfall of their societies from ancient to modern times, he is judgmental against those who obviously don't care about the environment, who "rape-and-run" making quick cash and leave environmental disasters for citizens and governments to clean up. He balances this analysis of greedy businesses with stellar businesses whose good practices show how everyone can benefit when a company creates a product that respects the environment.

"Environmental determinism" looks at the physical environment such as climate and geography trying to determine how it affects societies. This concept has had negative press over the years and has led to some people using racism or superiority of intellect over other cultures based the oppressor being smarter than the suppressed group of people. Diamond is always refuting this and he also takes his studies further looking at multiple aspects of a hypothesis that include climate, geography, botany, science, economics and more. It is one reason his books are so dense and slow to read. But they are fascinating and require thoughtful reflection.

He has quite a few great quotes and I would have expanded on them if my Nook eReader hadn't deleted all my highlights. I will try to remember some from my bad memory. The genocide in Rwanda was a product of land disputes, deforestation, exports, and too many people living in extreme poverty. There was a direct correlation between starvation and increased crime. Diamond explains how the ethnic violence was not based solely on ethnic hatred but tied in with land disputes. The argument is compelling and interesting. Australia's fragile environment is a great chapter to read as well.

Diamond discusses the rarity of a leader who has the courage to anticipate a potential problem and take steps to solve it before it becomes a crisis. "Such leaders expose themselves to criticism or ridicule before it becomes obvious to everyone that some action is necessary." Think of all the leaders you've come across in your life that surround themselves with people that tell them what they want to hear. The ability to listen to criticism and use it constructively and not be corrupted by power is not the norm.

I thought "Collapse" and "Gun, Germs, and Steel" both had first chapters that were hard to get through. This one is too detailed on Montana and slowed the pacing. The ancient societies that collapsed were not quite as interesting as the modern ones as his analysis is more complex because he has more information to prove his hypothesis. The author is quite brilliant and worth reading.

Terrifying how often the pattern of exploitation of nature and decline of cultures has repeated itself.

The fitting additional book to Diamonds work "Guns Germs and Steel" offers past and present scenarios of various environmental conditions and the mastery or miserable failure of the peoples trying to master the challenge. Especially in isolated societies, where the socio-cultural aspect is much more emphasized by the absence of invaders or other disturbing factors, the processes leading to the formation of today's ruins or prosperous cities are described.

As a classic positive example, Iceland, which counters the desolation of the climate zone and infertility of barren landscapes with strong community feeling and intelligent farming, can be named. Other isolated island states, such as Easter Island and other ghost islands, have been caught in the throes of social degeneration and driven to self-destruction by meaningless, prestigious or religiously driven construction projects, civil wars, exploitation of natural resources to the collapse of the ecosystem, or a bit of this and that mixed up together.

Often there was an old tradition of proven survival strategies on the failed island states, but their practice was mostly forgotten or ignored in the course of the delusion, resulting in the collapse of the social system and the extinction of the tribe.

How the authors' theses could be applied to the history of the development of more significant, continental nations would be highly enjoyable. This would probably be far too far-reaching and hypothetical because of the added complexity, which is why Diamond didn´t mention it, but it would make a great, new research area. The factors that are taken into account, such as climate change, hostile neighbors, environmental destruction, breaking an alliance or loss of support from friendly neighbors and, as a decisive factor, the reaction of the population and ruling caste, already present a high potential for complexity. Therefore, it would no longer be concluded with scientific seriousness by introducing additional factors such as in the case of the Roman Empire or other fallen empires.

It is noteworthy that the scheme of slow degeneration through creeping degradation of cultural as well as naturally given resources can strike both relatively primitive, almost Stone Age societies as unexpectedly as highly developed and militarily nearly unbeatable empires. Despite the admonishers of the respective time, fanaticism and megalomania became the leading motive and in hindsight apparent nonsensical and self-destructive mechanisms leaked into politics until it was accepted as usual and criticism was negated until the downfall.

At this point, it makes sense to see the accordances with the present and to illustrate the classic repetition of the history using various examples. Thus, even after dozens of vivid and illustrative learning examples from the history of what one should avoid as a state, the same, actually, precisely recognizable mistakes are committed today.
Whether it is negligent, irreversible environmental destruction, political destabilization until to the collapse of state and social order, including genocide and targeted destruction of infrastructure until relapse into archaic forms of government and theocracy, there is a wide range of patterns.

Their use seems to be so desirable to humanity that repeated attempts can no longer be construed as just perseverance. But instead, as ignorance and incompetence of elites, to whom a brief reading of any historical atlas could give numerous examples of the futility of their present action. The big and anxious question after completing the book remains whether we, as a society, may have not jumped on the wrong train for far too long. One that not only directs individual islands, regions or states, as described in the book, but the entire planet and the civilization living on it, on a path into the abyss.

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real-life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_D...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaps...

Collapse is even better than Guns, Germs, and Steel. And this time Diamond focuses, not on how environments have shaped people, but how we have transformed our environments. He looks at various places that suffered environmental collapse in the past, like Yucatan or Greenland, then looks at some relative success stories like Japan or the Dominican Republic. He mainly covers places where he has both personal experience and great background knowledge. The resulting tour is marvelously insightful, and close to the finest non-fiction writing out there. But his examples leave out the sites of history's greatest environmental collapses and challenges, across North Africa and the Middle East.

Having enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel a lot, I was excited to read Collapse. However, it ended up being a mixed bag for me.

The first half, in which he talks about ancient societies, their circumstances, why they failed and why they didn't change their behaviour, was extremely interesting and fascinating. I enjoyed reading about the Maya, Iceland, Greenland (even Vinland) and some Polynesian islands a lot, and I can definitely recommend the book if you want to find out more about their history and fate.
The only thing that I'd criticise is that after a while, it felt quite repetitive. Jared Diamond mentions the major reasons for the failure of societies pretty early on, and the following chapters felt to me like he was trying to prove his point over and over again.

The second half, which is about modern societies, couldn't hold my interest, mainly because I couldn't shake off the feeling that a lot of the information there must be outdated by now. The book was published in 2005, and a lot has happened since then. I constantly felt like checking the current situation online, and because of that, the book felt more like a chore than a fun and interesting read.

So, if you're interested in the general premise and don't mind a lot of research to understand the current situation, this book could be for you.