شما بگو 10 بار خوندن لازمه ، من میگم کمه
ملتی که محیط زیست نداره نَه "محیط" داره نَه زیست
یعنی کلا زندگی تعطیل و این یعنی فروپاشی

در خوانشِ بار دوم، ریویویِ تکمیل تری مد نظر خواهم داشت، به شرط حیات و حوصله

The thesis here is that the success or failure of any culture depends upon five factors:

Climate change,
Environmental preservation or degradation,
The presence of friendly external trade partners,
The presence of external enemies, and finally,
That society's ability and willingness to respond to the previous four factors.

To develop his theory, Diamond discusses about a dozen different societies, past and present, which had experienced various combinations of troubles with the first four factors, and each of which had responded differently to the challenges that it faced.

In describing the collapse of the society on Easter Island, he ponders what might have been going through the mind of the man who chopped down the very last of the trees that had been utterly indispensable to their civilization at its height. Diamond reasons that as the tree population declined slowly over the course of several generations, its importance in building and commerce likewise diminished, so that by the time only a handful remained, the once vital trees would have seemed nearly valueless. That woodsman would therefore most likely have had no idea how important those trees had been to his great grandparents and would have had no reason to understand the significance of destroying the last one.

In discussing the collapse of the Viking colony in Greenland, Diamond observes that the Vikings might have survived and flourished had they befriended their Inuit neighbors, and learned from them how to cope with the worsening climate. (Unfortunately for the Vikings, Greenland happened to have been uncharacteristically warm during their early years there, and they had no way of knowing that that warm period was to be short-lived.) The Norse colonists might, for example, have tried to copy the kayaks that served the Inuit so well for fishing. Instead, the Vikings looked down on the Inuit as inferiors and pagans (at this point the Norse had converted to Christianity), and clung vainly to a Northern European way of life that was unworkable in Greenland.

(The two examples above are only small samples of their respective sections of the book; neither represents the totality of those sections' arguments.)

Diamond concludes the book on a note of cautious optimism for the modern world's global society. With the advantages of our knowledge of past societies, and our modern technologies (and our understanding of the unintended consequences inherent in all technology), the world can overcome all of the political and environmental crises existing today, provided that governments and big business' are willing to respond intelligently to those crises. He adds that the only way they will have that will is if they're guided by conscientious voters and consumers.

This is a major work. Diamond looks in detail at the factors at play in the demise of civilizations in human history, using a wide range of examples. He offers a framework in which to structure the analysis and looks in great detail at possible (and in many cases certain) reasons why various societies collapsed. He is not a one-note analyst. All problems do not fit the same mold. There is considerable nuance and common sense brought to bear on this examination. Foolishness plays a part, greed, corruption. But just as frequently, the actors behave rationally. Maybe they were unaware or could not possibly be aware of the larger implications of their actions. Maybe the land in which they lived was ill-suited to large numbers of humans. Maybe changes in climate made what seemed a reasonable place a death trap. Clearly an analysis of why societies failed in the past, with particular attention to environmental issues, has direct relevance to our world today. For example, Polynesian islands that were dependant on resources from other islands collapsed when their import supply dried up. That has relevance to oil-dependant first world nations today, for example. Diamond goes out of his way to make a case that business is business and they are not in the business of performing charity or taking responsibility for the common weal. He does point out that some businesses have been instrumental in forcing improvements in producers. He cited Home Depot and BP among others, although I expect he might have second thoughts about the latter's net impact.

I found the book to be extremely eye-opening and informative. It was a long, slow read, but well worth the effort. It makes my short list of must read for anyone seriously interested in current affairs.

From now on, every fledgling civilization should be issued with a little pamphlet outlining the dangers of deforestation. On the cover, there'd be a picture of a toppled Easter Island statue, with the caption, "Learn from our mistakes: if you chop down all your trees, your society will expire in an orgy of cannibalism. Also, you might want to go easy on the monoliths."

Collapse is a sobering book, but I'm just jaded enough that after about the tenth analysis of pollen readings from core samples, I was like, "Come on, Jared. Get to the part where they eat each other." And that was before he launched into a detailed discussion of Japanese forestry policy in the Tokugawa era. Silviculture was a lot more interesting to me when I thought it had something to do with art therapy for seniors.

So, yeah, we're all gonna die, and some of us will probably end up getting eaten. But in the meantime, I've still got a few seasons of Barney Miller to download, so no rush.

One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.

Collapse examines various societies throughout history that have collapsed (Easter Island, Pitcairn, the Maya, Anasazi, the Vikings/Norse in Greenland) and compares these to societies that faced similar conditions and yet succeeded (Japan, New Guinea Highlands, the Vikings/Norse in Iceland). Diamond identifies five factors that define collapse or success.

Looking specifically at environmental impacts, Diamond identifies various forms of historical 'ecocide', including deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinisation and loss of soil fertility), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, the effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth and increased per capita impact of people. There is evidence of all these dangers in modern society.

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.

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.

As I have read this book the bush fire crisis in Australia was making news worldwide. Jared Diamond devoted an entire chapter to Australia in this 15 year old book and it made stark reading considering. He hardly covered fire that devours but had a lot to say about water, agriculture and mining. Mining is huge in this country to the point that multi national and local miners can campaign very hard, with the mass media heavyweight assistance of US plutocrat Rupert Murdoch, to get what they want. Governments will fall; some people do become silent as the fear of a smashing in the media as to their thoughts on the degradation of resources for cheap return are generally turned into some cheap point scoring propaganda on behalf of vested interests. Can I complain? Can I hell! Me and my generation, boomers, has made a mint from the resource sector via our superannuation with fast and easy returns and now in our dotage have a lot to yell about at those bludging whining youngsters. Good grief! Who are these people to complain about us receiving tax credits back from the PAYE taxpayer for our 1.9 million dollar worth of shares? 6,000 odd bucks a pop for that little investment. I’m alright Jack.


Which is why, depending on one’s point of view, the more interesting chapter in this book is 14 Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions? The premise of this chapter can cover the individual as well. There is rational behaviour behind all decisions no matter how (seemingly) poor. And here’s (seemingly) one for any of you that read my scribble. Diamond discusses the foolishness of cotton growing in Queensland and northern New South Wales that depletes water resources from the likes of the Murray Darling downstream. This is a big deal and nothing to do with one’s political belief. Rural (and with that very conservative) electorates downstream have complaining for years and years about water loss. Google is your friend to read up on this. So with cotton, drought etc. what do we get? Dubbo, a town in central NSW, easing water restrictions for the watering of one’s garden. And what a debate! How’s this for one news item on the subject pork chops?
https://7news.com.au/news/environment...

For a more cerebral read look at this.
ttps://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/scrapping...


Diamond writes that he is hopeful that correct decisions will be made with pressure from the public in general and gives many reasons as to why this has been successful. Again this all depends on ones point of view but after watching the power of the media to support and sway opinion in Australia over the issue of the environment (and tax credits on fully franked shares) I have my doubts.

It was suggested to me that some of the research may have been superseded, and a very quick internet read early on showed there was some thoughts as to the book becoming dated. Be that as it may it has been a good read and worth the effort.

A thorough and thoroughly depressing analysis of how societies past and presents have overpopulated, eaten, deforested, fought, and generally short-sighted and stubborned their way out of their own survival. "Oh, but that was then, now we're smarter and have ever better technology" - yeah, but uhm, we're not, and our better technologies are bringing their own host of massive, massive environmental issues. If the Easter Islanders managed to go extinct while armed with axes, we're able to do it so much more efficiently now. Very interesting, very depressing.

[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.

I listened to the abridged audio version of this book. Some of the discs were damaged, and I have no idea what I missed, so I won't rate the book. I wanted to listen to the full-length audio version, but I can't stand that reader's style. You'd have to put a firecracker up his nose to get him to put any inflection in his voice. (Don't forget to light the firecracker. An unlit one would just make him sound even more nasally challenged.)

A lot of what was in this book I already knew from my degree program at university. So the things that were new to me were of course the most interesting. I never would have guessed that Easter Island was once covered with giant coconut palms that are now extinct. The section about Greenland was also new to me, and so telling about prejudices. The Nordic people did not survive there because they were too superior to learn from the Inuit, who continue to thrive.

Before delving into the book, I wondered about the use of the word "choose" in the title. Now I understand how that is true. Societies have often "chosen" to succeed or fail depending on whether they use a top-down or bottom-up form of government and resource management.

It was quite the book to read at this time when the doomsday clock has advanced almost to midnight. No civilization is immune to collapse and we are arrogant if we think it will never happen here. We have no unified policies with humanities' interests at heart. The book is depressing and uplifting at the same time. Just as civilizations can collapse, so too they can survive. My greatest hope is that the world realizes that the Earth is a closed system, that resources do have a limit, that not everything is renewable, and that not all problems can be solved with more technology.