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.

Five stars for the importance of the topic, three stars because it's so repetitive. I get it! We're all going to cannibalize each other. Well, maybe not us, personally, but likely our grandchildren or great-grandchildren.

Sigh.

There are a lot of interesting historical factoid tidbits and ideas in this book, but I’d rather read the version that actually names and critiques capitalism and colonialism as source causes to collapse (how he managed to avoid using these concepts throughout says so much!), and that provides a climate justice framework as integral to our needed system change solutions. This book was definitely written in the early 2000’s but you would think Diamond had no idea that decolonization, intersectional feminism and critical theory was alive and well 20 years ago, with the language and frameworks he uses. I’m not going to take you serious if you use 3rd world/1st world binary throughout, but never even mention imperialism/colonialism when explaining world history and geography. Not visionary. Repeatedly falls into Corporate/empire apologist doublespeak. Boring at times. Not particularly well written and needs a serious edit from front to back. Shave off 150 pages easily. 2 stars overall.

[2011 Update: I am re-reading this after not quite 2 years. I have come to regard this book as the best non-fiction I've had the pleasure of reading, and recommend it emphatically if you have an interest in any of the subjects in which I have it categorized on my shelves.]

A masterwork, better even than Mr. Diamond's Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs and Steel. Collapse bridges the gap between anthropology and environmentalism, and critically connects each with our own welfare, both collectively and as individuals.

Diamond rightly takes to task environmental attitudes that appear to mindlessly value endangered birds or coral reefs above people's interests or livelihood. That said, he also clarifies which aspects of the environment we should care about and why. He tallies dollars cost and lives lost. He illustrates in example after well-documented example the consequences for societies disregarding their resource base or destructive practices. He repeatedly and explicitly asks the question: "well it obviously sucks to be a blue-footed bubi bird, but why should Joe Blow Logger care when he has the more pressing need to feed his family?" Well he should care very much about forests because he depends on them for his income. If he wants those children not to struggle with poverty and a declining society and standard of living, he should further care about many other aspects of the environment.

The biggies throughout history that have played a primary role in virtually every societal collapse are deforestation and soil erosion and/or salinization. To that we add a host of other common problems that can and must be solved, including habitat loss, water management and pollution, greenhouse gasses, resource over-exploitation, and energy supply.

Diamond goes deeper than simply blaming corporations for their destructive practices. He examines the policies and economic realities that drive corporations in polluting industries like mining to behave as they do, or the pressures they face. The fact is, in a market economy, where profit is the motive, successful companies will pollute to the full extent that our laws and attitudes allow. He states: "I also assign to the public the added costs, if any, of sound environmental practices, which I regard as normal costs of doing business. My views may seem to ignore a moral imperative that businesses should follow virtuous principles, whether or not it is most profitable for them to do so. Instead I prefer to recognize that... government regulation has arisen precisely... for the enforcement of moral principles."

Of course the rest of the book demonstrates how it is far more urgent than a mere moral principle, but a practical one necessary to ensure any society's long-term survival.

This is an exhaustive and exhausting read. Should’ve been tightened up and trimmed down, not only did I get tired of the meandering but I got worn down from getting machine-gunned with an avalanche of what I considered often superfluous details. Still, I thought it was very good, the historical examples of collapse (and also the examples of societies that successfully changed to avoid disaster) were interesting. It put the contemporary analysis/problems we face in perspective.

I remember reading Guns, Germs, Steel and while I enjoyed it Diamond's geographical determinism was tiresome and I suspect overplayed. In this book he focuses on environmental stresses and issues playing a role in collapsing societies. I think he does a good job in explaining the multitude of factors beyond this arena, so it isn’t quite as one-tracked and only focused on environmental determinism. I think environment is crucial but it’s important to add proper qualifiers and try to not overplay your thesis.

My impression is anthropologists really seem to have an ax to grind with Diamond. Always interesting to see what people from certain fields have to say about popular books written about their domain (especially those books written by someone who isn’t part of their tribe). I haven’t read specific critiques of this book just remember some articles I’ve seen where anthropologists have absolutely smashed Diamond for his other work. I imagine some of their critique is right but it seems overly harsh, a bit overdone leading me to wonder if they aren’t just trying to protect their turf. Anyhow, I’m sure in such a huge book as this one, covering so much material, Diamond made some missteps but I think his overall thesis is ballpark correct (and important!) and the general historical analysis strikes me as solid.

Given the interwoven nature of the global economy, intricate complexity of our systems, and rates of environmental destruction and pressures we are applying on environment Diamond readily admits we are facing huge, potentially civilization changing downshifts. Grave risks, weakness or breakdown in one part of the global system can reverberate throughout. So it was kind of jarring to me when he states at the end of his book that he is “cautiously optimistic” we can turn things around in regards to preventing environmental breakdowns and catastrophes for global civilization. I was a bit surprised by that tbh, maybe I was struck by the nonchalance of his optimism especially given his devastating analysis of what we are facing. I’m certainly not as sanguine. I always kind of hope that hey, maybe I’ve just drank too much of that Jonestown Climate Change/Environmental Apocalypse kool-aid ha. Would love to be magnificently wrong on everything but I’d rather try and see things as they are than try and lie to myself with beautiful illusions. I’m just a lay person, but my sense given what I’ve read is that we are in big trouble and courting a slowly unfurling disaster.

There were some great sections. I liked the one where he spells out something like a list of 10 reasons/statements people use to minimize environmental problems. This includes people who have magical belief in deux ex machina future tech that will come save us from problems we have or are causing. I’m glad he hates this because I hate it, it really drives me bonkers, the use of this concept is a great way to sidestep any responsibility or accountability for present actions and greenlights continuation of pernicious status quo. I do think tech and innovation can be tools to help us, but they all have various externalities and can cause new problems of their own, plus in regards to environment, since the systems are all so interconnected you destroy or damage one aspect it can lead to a grand cascade. At that point tech can maybe help minimize issues but it is hard (impossible?) if damage is too great the unleashed cascade will shudder throughout the systems. Good luck putting the genie back in the bottle, some changes are irrevocable (6th extinction underway is a good example, even the destruction of what can seem an innocuous tiny microorgamisn can completely change the ecosystem with implications for species in that system). Diamond also points out another argument people use to justify environmental destruction: well the environment is a luxury and we need to do everything we can for our economy (which includes destroying the environment). The economy is driven by the environment! you break the environment (or elements of it) and you will likely hamstring your economy in various ways. Happens again and again. And it's not simple, I understand the tension in this dynamic because if you are hungry today you need to do whatever it is you can to put food on the table and sometimes that includes destroying the environment which will have long term implications, but if you are hungry and desperate you don't have as much luxury to think about or emphasize the long term.

I’m not sure how I feel about his soft defense of corporations and his emphasis on the consumer. I think it annoys me, lol. He doesn’t give corporations a free pass, but he tries to explain why they do what they do. He tries to play a balanced view on all this, hey corporations have to operate under their prime directive (PROFITS! at all costs) or they will be sued by shareholders if they don’t (regardless of damage done to environment, community, etc). He also very much emphasizes consumer ability to exert pressure on companies to shift to more environmentally friendly habits. I believe this is a good tactic but can also be limited (not to mention not all consumers have luxury to shift to more environmentally friendly consumption nor the luxury of time to research and learn what those options might be). Ultimately I am of the belief one has to reform the systems we are operating in, this includes reforming how corporations operate (instead of monolithic submission to shareholders I believe in a multi-foundational mission for corporations where community, workers, management, shareholders are all taken into consideration. This is more holistic in my view than the blind submission to shareholders who hold companies and company policy/strategy hostage).

The concept of sustainable living might be a high priority for me but it is very hard given the way the system is set up, I still generate a massive amount of trash and use tons of energy… this is not to sidestep accountability, because I should be held accountable and I can do better and many things I can do... but I think even the best intentioned have a hard time because our society is set up in such a way that we are nudged (pushed!) towards more environmentally destructive options (these are cheaper, more convenient options usually, sometimes the only option). Diamond doesn’t really get into this concept of reforming corporations or the infrastructure and systems within our society.

I think this is a good book but if you are looking for a concise systems analysis text on the environmental issues we are facing and the earth’s capacity to sustain it I highly recommend Donna Meadows Limits to Growth (30 year edition): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...

This was my favorite quote from the book and I think it is very good and can be applied to how blinded our thinking can be, including my own:

“[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.”

Oh, and here is another good quote. Diamond touches on this concept and it is pertinent to many problems: elites being insulated from the problems they create. It is often elites/corporations who extract wealth then hightail it out of there with no consequences for their actions/environmental destruction (letting other people deal with the destruction or messes they create, while elites pocket all the $$$). This quote is more about the insulation of elites on the consumption side of things, but the extraction (production) side is important imo and I was glad to see Diamond explore that problem:

“In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions."

My take-away from this difficult but absolutely important book is that we urgently need to change the ways in which we think, and in which we make our collective decisions.

This book was written 12 years ago, which is frightening enough, and even then, what he described seemed overwhelming. He does a monumental job of synthesizing and analyzing data from key cultures all over the world at different times, looking at what worked and didn't work from a long-term survival point of view, and asking (a bit like the questions asked by Cook in A Brief History of the Human Race ) why these various societies failed or succeeded.

Most instructive, as I see it, are the contrasting examples of Greenlands live Inuits and Dead Norse, and Hispanyola's foresting Dominican Republic and stripped-bare Haiti. He points to collapses, near-collapses, and timely but not necessarily popular policies placed to prevent collapse (particularly well summarized on page 440), and also delves into the problems of mass-manipulation and the related problem of group-think, using the handling of the decision-making processes in the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missle crisis as contrasting examples of how president Kennedy adapted (even stepped out to ensure that they could think without being intimidated by his presence, wow) his governance processes in the small group situation to prevent a recurrence of his error with Bay of Pigs. How rare for a leader to insist that his advisors, and he, change their thinking strategy, and it worked. Unfortunately for the identity-bound Greenland Norse Christians, they were unable to change their thinking, and they died while the Inuits lived, under the very same climatalogical conditions, and with better tools and weapons to boot.
He goes on to answer many oft-cited solutions, like technology, as unable to solve the problems we face, which he lists in 12 major categories, unless we change (as Einstein also said) our ways of thinking, and he also pointed out that much of the problem is one related back to the Tragedy of the Commons (I remember seeing a rebuttal of that issue while working on my phd, but it escapes me) and points out that small-ish Non-anonymous groups often work best at policing themselves democratically (as my conclusions also found regarding small-scale issuance of money in SHARED MONETARY GOVERNANCE: Exploring Regulatory Frameworks, Participatory Internal Decision-making and Scale in Institutional Access to General and Special Purpose Currencies ) -the decision-making process is critical.

He also goes into some statistics that almost began to sound like what David Hackett Fischer talked about in The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History regarding the correlation between societal upheavals and price inflation, which is caused by any number of variables also cited here by Jared Diamond: population pressure and consumption, types of energy being gathered and used and the by-products or externalities and problems caused thereby, inequalities of various kinds, etc.

He stresses that the decisions we make collectively, upon which our lives literally depend, are often made out of a biased or even racist point of view, as with the Greenland Norse who died as civilized European Christians, refusing to learn from or cooperate with the Inuit, who lived. (Ok, maybe they didn't have the choice of cooperating with, but they could surely see that the Inuit ate things that they, the Norse, refused, and also did not keep cows or sheep, which are not good animals to raise in Greenland!)
We therefore, just as both Armstrong in Islam: A Short History and Cook also point out, absolutely must change our ways of viewing and interacting with other cultures. We no longer, as Dr. King said over 40 years ago in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, have the luxury of not cooperating.
Shira
14 August, 12017 HE
(the Holocene Calendar)

5/5 STARS. Jared Diamond examines why some societies have failed--and why some have been successful. An essential book.
A more complete review to come, if I find the time!

If you care about the world and the survival of the human race, then you must read this book. Period. Buy it now.

It will teach you more than you ever thought possible in one book. You will look at the world differently. It will expand your mind.

- Lilo
Author of The Light Who Shines

And just to be technically correct, this is not a review. It is a recommendation.

holy F am i glad that this is over. i hate to criticise because when was the last time that i wrote a 500+ page interdisciplinary tome as a follow-up to a Pulitzer Prize-winner? nevertheless, this book has serious flaws.

i did learn a lot - not only historical facts and profiles of ancient and existing societies, but also about how environmental problems actually wreak their damage, and how the mining, oil, coal and other industries operate.

my main complaint about this book is that it very quickly becomes entirely unreadable. it's one the most painful, repetitive, loquacious, disorganised trudges that i've had to suffer through since attempting Fraser's 'The Golden Bough'. this book is in need of further editing. it could have been refined to half its current length without diminishing its strengths. in fact, 'Collapse' reads like two books - one on the role of the environment on societal collapses and another on how environmental damage is affecting the world at present.

another gripe, more personal, is that he assumes too much of his audience, i.e. that we're all a bunch of speciesist capitalists.

also, despite a veneer of open-minded, cosmopolitan worldliness, i could not help feeling that the book contains culturally insensitive content, e.g. repeatedly referring to Native Americans as Indians and to developing countries as the Third World, and that Diamond is somehow reluctantly restraining himself when he writes about immigration and 'Third World' countries adopting 'First World' standards.

my advice: read the intro, maybe the first chapter, then the final chapter, and you're good.

i'm looking forward to liberating more space on the shelf. when i first began reading 'Collapse', i was planning on reading 'Guns, Germs and Steel' next, but forget that. i need some sci-fi vampires to recover.

The esteemed Jared Diamond, author of one of the most insightful and profound books of the previous decade: Guns Germs and Steel, tried to break the wave of his success on Collapse, a book about the failure of societies due to a laundry-list of (mostly environmental) issues. It’s too soon to render a verdict on the bearded Professor (unlike Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson) since he wisely chose topics which cannot be gauged within a human lifetime but the book itself was a real steaming pile of environmental compost. I can’t resist quoting Fred L. Smith Jr. of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: "[a] jumble of jigsaw puzzle pieces laid out on the table - no structure, no serious organization." Indeed, I was so pissed after reading this book that I wanted to rip out all 592 pages and use every single one to give the author paper cuts between his toes. Then set him out barefoot on the New Guinea lowlands about which he can’t seem to shut the flock up. But this is a book review and I digress because I’m getting all worked up again so I’m going to end this paragraph prematurely: *SPURT*

Several straw men were sacrificed to make this book possible.

My objections to Collapse are nearly identical to the ones I voiced in my review of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Jared Diamond's thesis that past societal collapses have largely been due to five main factors is a good thesis, and he makes a compelling argument. However, Collapse is poorly written and edited; Diamond reiterates his points so much that it feels somewhat patronizing.

Diamond analyzes the collapse of six past societies: the Easter Islanders, the Pitcairn and Henderson Islanders, the Anasazi, the Mayans, and the Vikings. He then compares these societies to modern societies (both societies that face problems and ones that have solved some problems which previously led to collapses). All of these analyses are very well-thought out, well-presented arguments that support Diamond's overarching thesis (if somewhat belaboured). One of the most useful aspects of these repetitive case studies is how Diamond points out which of his "five factors" influenced each society's collapse. (The five factors, by the way, were: environmental damage, climate change, decrease in interaction with friendly foreigners, increase in hostilities from foreigners, and how the society responds to environmental concerns.) For instance, deforestation played the major role in causing the demise of the Easter Islanders; on the other hand, the Inuit survived in Greenland because they adapted to their environment in a way that the Eurocentric Vikings refused to do. By pointing out these differences, Diamond elevates this book above the typical "well, some societies had problems, so they collapsed" tone of a TV documentary. Each case study is interesting in its own right and well worth further investigation--Diamond provides plenty of suggestions for further reading.

Much of the book is a treatise on the fragility of our biosphere. Diamond attempts to convince us that he's unbiased when it comes to environmental concerns, claiming he is neither pro- nor anti-environment. I doubt that any reader would believe this claim after the first chapter, and certainly no one could accept it after the end of the book. However, while Diamond is pro-environment, he demonstrates that he is not necessarily anti-business. In fact, he spends much of his time trying to show that businesses can and will clean up their act if pressured into doing so or shown how it will benefit them. I approve of this stance, just as I approve of the fact that Diamond carefully avoids "environmental determinism"--i.e., that a society's surroundings totally dictate the fate of a society.

After examining past societies, Diamond looks at modern societies, both what's working and what isn't. He takes an excruciatingly detailed look at Montana, but I don't fault him for this, since it's apparently an area with which he has much experience. Once again, he extols Papua New Guinea as an excellent country full of awesome people--I skimmed that part, having read enough such praise in Guns, Germs, and Steel. I actually found the chapter on modern Australia the most interesting; I hadn't reflected before on the problems, which in hindsight are logical consequences, caused by the colonization of this rugged continent. Collapse is a reminder that even so-called "First World" countries have their share of problems; Diamond's framework is universal rather than restricted only to poor or isolated societies.

The last part of the book concerns what we can do to stem the rising tide of problems that could cause future societal collapses. This is particularly important, since Diamond notes that globalization means a collapse affects the entire world, even if it is localized to a single country or even continent. Diamond throws out some suggestions and also refutes common "lines" supplied by opponents to the call to arms he's taken up. After the rousing chapter on Australia, this part was lacklustre at best. If it weren't for the monotonous emphasis on supporting Diamond's thesis, I would think I was reading a novel with a climax and then a disappointing resolution! To be fair, however, the final chapter was interesting if not entertaining.

I'm more pessimistic than Diamond at this time. Then again, as I write this I'm only 19, much less mature and experienced than most people who ruminate upon these problems, particularly Diamond himself. Unfortunately, I've already come to the conclusion that Diamond and others are attempting to communicate now: we cannot continue like this. The Earth cannot support our population with our current methods of managing our resources and the current level of impact we have, as individuals, on the planet. Something's gotta give, and it may just be our quality of life--something we pampered First World citizens are very reluctant to surrender, much less reduce. Diamond finds some hope in the fact that, with better management of our resources, we can sustain both our current population and quality of life while still reducing our impact on the planet itself. It's up to us, the public, to push governments and businesses to take the necessary steps.

Collapse was as interesting an argument as I had hoped, although this comes with the caveat that it's a poorly written book. There are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon (or in my case, a couple of afternoons), and if you're a fan of Diamond's previous work, you'll find this tolerable. If this is your first Diamond book, I think that Guns, Germs, and Steel was marginally better. However, the subject matter of Collapse is still fascinating, and Diamond does it justice.