If I could give this negative stars I would. Just another example of Jared Diamond writing a book on something he doesn't know anything about, and spinning narratives that are harmful and dangerous into palatable books for public consumption.

DNF

Oh my lord, I could not possibly with this one. Diamond's writing is just too exhaustive and too dense for me to make much headway. I am interested in these ideas but prefer the summary articles I've read that reference this book much more.

LESSON GIVERS ARE BORING AND NO HISTORIANS

JARED DIAMOND – COLLAPSE – 2005-2011

This book is a long collection of cases of civilizations or countries that failed, how they failed, what were the causes of their failing (plus a few success stories). This insistence on failing makes it very pessimistic in many ways. But the second characteristic is that the book does not explore the past for itself, but it is exploring the past to draw lessons for the present. The basic assumption is thus that the present world is on the brink of failing or collapsing. That takes a lot of value from the book because then the cases are understood as being illustrations if not arguments for the importance of climate change in human history, and the importance of environmental sustainability. And actually, we are brought to thinking that some cases have been over-exploited in that direction; The main shortcoming is that at times the book is retrospective. It does not try to understand what happened in the past, but it looks at it with a modern vision, a modern interpretation, something that is anachronistic in the past situations that are concerned.

That’s why he gives the conclusions in the opening prologue. We are going to start with them, I mean to list them, not discuss them. Then we will consider a few cases, hence a few chapters.

He starts with giving the TWELVE causes of collapse that he also calls threats. A first group of eight that I number here, though they are not in the book:
1-tdeforestation and habitat destruction;
2-tsoil problem (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses);
3-twater management problems;
4-toverhunting;
5-toverfishing;
6-teffects of introduced species on native species;
7-thuman population growth;
8-tincreased per capita impact of people. (page 6, my numbering).

To these he adds four new ones (understood as from the present):
9-thuman-caused climate change;
10-tthe buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment;
11-tenergy shortages;
12-tfull human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. (page 7, my numbering)

He can then consider our present and list four modern advantages:
1-tour powerful technology (i.e., its beneficial effects);
2-tglobalization;
3-tmodern medicine;
4-tgreater knowledge of past societies and of distant modern societies. (page 8, my numbering)

And to complete this listing he gives four modern risks:
1-tour potent technology (i.e., its unintended destructive effects);
2-tglobalization (such that now a collapse even in remote Somalia affects the U.S. and Europe);
3-tthe dependence of millions (and, soon, billions) of us on modern medicine for our survival;
4-tour much larger human population. (page 8, my numbering)

Without discussing these elements, we can shift to his next listing of his

“five-point framework of possible contributing factors that I now consider in trying to understand any putative environmental collapse. Four of those sets of factors – 1- environmental damage, 2- climate change; 3- hostile neighbors; and 4- friendly trade partners – may or may not prove significant for a particular society. The fifth set of factors – 5- the society’s responses to its environmental problems – always proves significant. (page 11, my numbering)

He then examines them separately and it is interesting to see the longer phrasing he uses.
1-tThe first set of factors involves damage that people inadvertently inflict on their environment (page 11, my numbering);
2-tThe next consideration in my five-point framework is climate change, a term that today we tend to associate with global warming caused by humans (page 12, my numbering);
3-tThe third consideration is hostile neighbors (page 13, my numbering);
4-tThe fourth set of factors is the converse of the third set: decreased support by friendly neighbors (page 14, my numbering);
5-tThe last set of factors in my five-point framework involves the ubiquitous question of the society’s responses to its problems (page 14, my numbering).

He then explains that his method is a comparative method, meaning that he will systematically compare crises in various societies to understand each one. And he gives his conclusion straight away:

“Globalization . . . lies at the heart of the strongest reasons both for pessimism and for optimism about our ability to solve our current environmental problems . . . For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. But we also are the first to enjoy the opportunity of learning quickly from developments in societies anywhere else in the world today, and from what has unfolded in societies at any time in the past.” (page 23-24)

That is my introduction, but it is the author’s conclusions, that I did not discuss at all, given in his prologue to the book. That is not very scientific and in the book it is clear that there is no real diachrony, historicity, phylogeny of anything, but simply the synchronic study of cases with no real phylogenetic approach of each case within the general phylogeny of humanity, and this succession of synchronic studies is transferred in in the book’s conclusive chapters onto the present in the last part of the book on “Practical Lessons” which only target the possible political decisions humanity has to take to face, confront and fight in order to solve the climate challenge of today. The point is each case requires so much discussion that the practical lessons are nothing but preaching from a preacher who has interpreted the past or present, old or recent cases in his sole perspective of supporting if not validating his own political position for today’s world. I can stop there and let you discover that political statement of his that as a historian I do not even want to discuss: politics is not history.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

کتاب فروپاشی، به بررسی این مسئله می‮پردازد که چگونه جوامع انسانی در اثر عوامل مختلف دچار انحطاط و فروپاشی می‮شوند.

این کتاب، تحقیقی در مورد سقوط و فروپاشی برخی از تمدن‌های برتر تاریخ جهان است. با اینکه جارد دایموند بخش عمده کتاب را به توضیح در مورد ‮دلایل نابودی تمدن‮های تاریخی مانند مایا و یا وایکنیگ‮ها اختصاص داده است، اما خط سیر کتاب فروپاشی، به گونه‮ای است که برخلاف سایر کتاب های تاریخی جرد دایموند نیست و نویسنده در این کتاب با نگاهی موشکافانه به بررسی عوامل سقوط جوامع پرداخته است؛ دلایلی که در ظاهر امر نمی‮توان آن را تشخیص داد و باید به عمقش نفوذ کرد.‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

So Diamond wrote the great book, Gun, Germs, and Steel that rightly won the Pulitzer.

Diamond seems to have said, hey, I can parlay that success and shoehorn a book that lets me talk about the places I love personally, like Montana and Papa New Guinea with the never ending lamentations over climate change and the environment.

Also, I felt bamboozled. The Collapse Diamond is referencing is almost all about his overwrought environmental alarmism, and second, major aspects of the book deal with ancient cultures like the Anasazi, Pitcairn, Easter island, and ancient Norse settlements in Greenland.

Backstory here: I read the Dawn of everything awhile back and the book was long and tedious and really brought into focus how much of ancient anthropology is a con.

99% of Humanities research submitted never gets referenced again. Now, over 50% of science research has been shown to unreplicable— meaning, no one is able to get the same results the experimenter claims they did.

In other words, huge swathes of academia are little more than workfare for the mediocre…and then there’s arch/anthropology: take away pollen and ice core carbon dating and the ubiquitous midden analysis and anthropologist and archaeologist have close to zero actual evidence.

Or said another way, a midden, an ancient shit pile, is the sine qua non of info on ancient cultures that lacked writing.

Can you imagine what future studies of us would ascertain from just studying where we dumped the food we ate? What would they determine our culture was like? Well, they would have no idea.

So there’s my rant on this which Collapse just happened to trigger.

Otherwise, the book is a sometimes interesting but pedantic look at isolated areas that underwent population failure. The great share of these failure were due to population rising during good times where rain and land was good and then being stressed mightily when the weather turned poor and all those people starting getting angry and hungry and began tearing at the roots of these societies.

Are their lessons for the vast technological modern West? Sure, but not nearly as much as the fanboy Diamond supposes.

I can't believe that people think Collapse is readable.

One of the most important questions of humanity. Why do human societies fail or succeed? And Jared Diamond proves that he is an incredibly talented writer, as well as one of the main researchers and thinkers that can dare to answer such a question. He takes on an amazing journey through some of the most epic experiences in human civilization. And we do learn how to look at our own time with the perspective of our species' past failures and sucesses.

Ha sido un buen libro. Bien enfocado a explicar el concepto de un sistema social y economico cerrado como es el propio planeta tierra pero visto des de perspectivas de sociedades historicamente aisladas cuyas civilizaciones colapsaron por la mala gestión de sus propios recursos. Principalmente capítulos como la China actual me han dejado pensativo. Al final un país que ha basado su gran potencial económico en dos pilares: alta demografía con mano barata y gran acceso a recursos abaratiendo costes de gestión ambiental. Pero al final todo sistema colapsa y se explica claramente como una mala gestión ambiental puede llevar al colapso de tu propia fuente de ingresos! Un buen ejemplo es como la sobreexplotación forestal llevo a un incremento en la economía de una determinada región, pero la falta de cubierta vegetal en las laderas montañosas llevó a mayor erosion del suelo, sedimentación de ríos y consecuente menor calado, por lo que se perdió la capacidad de transporte fluvial en epocas de sequia, con un mucho mayor impacto en la industria y economia de esa misma región.

Al final del día, aunque vivamos en un mundo globalizado, no deja de ser un sistema cerrado con materia limitada. Algo parecido a lo que pudo pasar en civilizaciones aisladas como los Mayas o la isla de Pascua

Un abrazo todas mis #GatesLesbianes!

"Colapso es una trampa ¡aléjense!". Pensé que esta debería ser la primera frase de mi reseña de este voluminoso ensayo del gran Jared Diamond, pero en el último momento me arrepentí y me di cuenta que era injusto para con un libro al que le gaste 200 banderitas Post It (¡chanfle! igual la frase quedo encabezando la reseña).

Por dónde comenzar a describir mi complicada experiencia con el libro.

Tal vez debería empezar contándoles que fue la segunda vez que leí un libro en compañía (o más bien debería decir "simultáneamente").

La lectura conjunta del libro fue la segunda experiencia piloto que emprendí con un buen amigo de lecturas, el nunca bien ponderado Juan Camilo (lean la reseña de Colapso escrita por el mismo Johnson aquí... y por ahí derecho lean todas sus otras reseñas ¡son muy originales!).

Creo que Juan Camilo coincidiría conmigo en una cosa: ¡fue una mala elección!. Ya habíamos leído "Crisis" del mismo autor y nos había ido bien. Pero no esperábamos que Colapso hiciera colapsar el futuro de nuestro piloto.

Primer problema: el libro es muy largo: 720 páginas en la edición de "Debolsillo" (¡de bolsillo!) y unas 1000 y cacho en la edición de Kindle. Pero creímos que ese no sería problema; al fin y al cabo libros tan o más largos se han escrito sobre la divulgación de la historia y la biogeografía. El problema es que a Colapso le sobran como 350 páginas.

Segundo problema: como lo menciona el mismo Diamond desde el principio (no vimos las señales), el contenido de este libro es parte de sus curso en la Universidad de California en los Ángeles. Mala cosa. El tono del libro es justamente ese: el tono muy académico de las notas de un curso del afamado Profesor Jared Diamond. El resultado: un verdadero ladrillo para quiénes no matriculamos la materia con Diamond. Imagino que los estudiantes del posgrado en historia de la UCLA disfrutaran del exceso de detalles en el libro, pero los lectores desprevenidos del autor de "Armas, Gérmenes y Acero" sinceramente nos sentimos traicionados (¿por los editores?).

Tercer problema: el libro comienza con el peor capítulo, "La Montana moderna". Una descripción extremadamente promenorizada (como para no usar polisílabos más largos) de los problemas ambientales que enfrenta la región de Montana en los Estados Unidos (¡¿a quién le importa realmente?!) en el tiempo en el que fue escrito el libro (2003). El autor incluso nos "recrea" con algunas transcripciones completas de las declaraciones de los vecinos de Montana (¡aburrido!).

¿Dónde estaban los editores de Diamond cuando el ganador del Pulitzer decidió comenzar su libro con un tema tan poco universal y aburrido? (espanta lectores). Tal vez lo de "Pulitzer" responda mi pregunta.

Les confieso que si no fuera por Juan Camilo, habría abandonado el libro en la mitad del primer capítulo.

Hasta aquí los problemas.

¿En que me gaste entonces las 200 banderitas?

Todo hay que decirlo: la idea del libro es ¡genial! (como lo fueron también las ideas de los otros dos libros de esta "saga", Armas, gérmenes y acero y Crisis, en los enlaces, mis reseñas de esos buenos libros).

Odio repetir las descripciones, pero no sobra mencionar que el libro enumera, describe y analiza el surgimiento y desaparición (o éxito) de una serie de sociedades del pasado y del presente, por la acción de una multitud de factores (que Diamond, como lo hace en sus otros libros, identifica y analiza).

El libro estudia los casos muy sonados (pero no tan bien conocidos, como termina uno descubriendo después de leer el libro) de la desaparición de la compleja sociedad de la Isla de Pascua, las multitudinarias sociedades Mayas o los pueblos anasasi en el suroeste de los Estados Unidos (que, al menos yo, conocí por la serie Cosmos). Pero también otros casos menos conocidos del colapso de sociedades del pasado, como es el caso de otros pueblos en islas del pacífico polinesio o los vikingos de Groenlandia (mis capítulos preferidos). Finalmente realiza un análisis de la gestión de los recursos y el inminente colapso (o éxito) de pueblos del presente, desde el fatídico caso de los campesinos ruandeses hasta la Australia minera.

No puedo decir que no aprendí muchísimo leyendo estos capítulos. Si algo bueno tienen los libros de Diamond de biogeografía es que terminas aprendiendo como un chucho sobre lugares del mundo que en la vida visitaras.

Pero tampoco les puedo decir que disfrute de los cientos de páginas dedicados a cada caso.

Que no se confunda sin embargo mi desazón como lector, con una falta de justa admiración como científico por el trabajo de documentación de Diamond. ¡Tremendo trabajo! Pero definitivamente no para un libro divulgativo (o no en la forma en la que quedo escrito).

Como siempre los últimos capítulos, en los que Diamond recoge todas las enseñanzas de su pormenorizado análisis de las sociedades del pasado y del presente, contienen una valiosa colección de lecciones sobre las malas o buenas gestiones que le estamos dando al planeta, que como dice un proverbio indígena "no lo heredamos de los abuelos, sino que se lo estamos administrando a nuestros hijos".

Me queda solo una pregunta. Los historiadores del futuro nos verán como una copia avanzada de los extraños habitantes de Rapa Nui, que teniendo el colapso ambiental de su isla en frente de las narices no supieron reaccionar a tiempo, o acaso nos verán como como los habitantes de Nueva Guinea. que resolvieron el problema con un enfoque de "abajo hacia arriba" (de la gente a las corporaciones).

¡"Amanecerá" y veremos! (y es amanecerá, es un amanecerá casi inmediato: ¡en 10 o 20 años lo sabremos!).

Si el Profesor Diamond se los pide (o sí son como niños que tienen que meter el dedo en la llama para probar el fuego), lean Colapso.

En caso contrario, no lo hagan: ¡hay muchos otros buenos textos esperándolos!

This is a collection of fables drawn from human history all demonstrating how certain human societies have either achieved happiness through the wise management of their population and environment or have brought down divine nemesis upon themselves by ignoring overpopulation and the need to protect the environment. Each one of the tales is quite well down.

The seams between the tales are terrible visible and one shakes one's head at the seemingly arbitrary method used to select the stories. In other words, this is a hastily thrown together work designed to capitalize on the momentum in the market place created by Mr. Diamond's previous work: Guns, Germs and Steel.

Read and enjoy it if you have already read the vastly superior Guns, Germs and Steel. If you buy it in a marked-down bin or borrow it from a public library you will resent the crash commercialism of it much less.

Turns out that Diamond was simply passing along received wisdom about Easter Island that has been refuted by subsequent researchers and scholars.

============

His story about the conquest of the Incas by the Spanish has also been pre-empted by fresh scholarship. This documentary explains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JZKU...

Collapse is a book which takes a look at societies both past and present to examine in depth how each of these societies failed or succeeded according to a five point framework laid out by the author Jared Diamond.

The framework can be summarized as follows:
1. Damages societies cause to their environment and whether or not that damage is reversible concerning things like deforestation, resource extraction, soil erosion, sustainability of fisheries and other food sources.
2. Climate change and how societies have either adapted or failed to adapt to dry climates, wet climates and cold climates as well as the different challenges they pose for the other factors within this framework.
3. Hostile neighbors and how such hostilities have affected a society's ability to thrive in their environments.
4. Trade with neighbors and how the dependence on some trade partners has contributed to the rise or fall of different nations throughout history.
5. The last and probably most important factor is how a society chooses to address the problems they are facing. This is dependent largely on a society's politics, cultural values, economics and social institutions according to Jared Diamond.

Each chapter is more or less a case study of a different society or civilization that either collapsed or still exists today. Diamond puts these societies under the microscope of his five point framework to determine how they collapsed or how they overcame the challenges they faced. The idea is to look at the past/present in order to determine how we as a globalized citizens can solve the problems currently threatening our existence today. The challenges are daunting and although the book has a seemingly pessimistic outlook overall it's certainly not impossible for humanity to overcome them. Jared Diamond considers himself a cautious optimist when considering the environmental, climate and political problems facing us today and remains hopeful we'll find the political will to enact the changes necessary to avoid the collapse that could be facing us in just a few decades time.

I personally found the book to be very well written, researched and most of all eye opening. I think it should be mandatory reading for the inhabitants of this fragile world we share and depend on together.