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.

Tüfek, Mikrop ve Çelik kadar olmasa da çok beğendiğim bir Jared Diamond kitabı daha oldu. Bu kitapta Diamond, toplulukların çöküşe nasıl gittiklerini, bunu önceden kestirebilecekleri ipuçlarının olup olmadığını ve günümüz medeniyeti olarak bundan çıkarabileceğimiz dersleri tartışıyor.

Kitap diğer Diamond kitapları kadar akıcı değil. Girişteki Montana bölümü fazla uzun tutulmuş. Amerika Birleşik Devletleri'nde yaşamayan insanlar için belki de sıkıcı bir bölüm olabilir. İlerleyen bölümlerden en çok dikkat çekenler Paskalya halkı ve Grönland İskandinavlarına neler olduğunu anlattığı bölümler.

Kitapta editörlük, Türkçe çok kötü. Örn. 414. sayfada "çukulata" diye çevrilmiş çikolata. Sayısız yerde dahi anlamına gelen "de/da" ekleri ayrı yazılmamış. Bir çok harf hatası var.

Kitabın Chevron firması gibi bazı petrol şirketlerine övgüler yağdıran bölümleri insanı biraz şüpheye sevk ediyor. Diamond çeşitli firmaların talebi doğrultusunda çevre raporları yazmış. Burada edindiği tecrübeleri de paylaşıyor. Burada firmaların iyi uygulamalarını başka firmalara örnek göstermek kaygısı taşıdığı kesin. Ancak ister istemez ulusaşırı şirketlerin az gelişmiş ülkelerin yer altı kaynaklarına yönelik duydukları ilginin arka planını göz ardı etmiş veya veri olarak almış. Zaten Diamond'un hiçbir zaman kapitalizm eleştirisi yaptığını görmedim. O nedenle bu noktada beklenmedik bir şey yok. Kendisi de kitabın girişinde zaten bu konuda eleştiriler aldığını itiraf etmiş.

Neticede güzel dersler çıkarılabilecek, önemli bir okumaydı. Çevre tahribatının sürmesi bu hızla devam ederse bizlerin de sonunun Paskalya halkı gibi olacağını yeterince sarih anlatmış.

M. Baran
27.03.2022
Ankara

"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!

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.

Extremely repetitive, inadequately researched, highly speculative, and overly assertive. Jared Diamond clearly knows a lot about some things, but he seems to think he knows a lot about everything. And he gets a lot wrong, at least on the things I know something about (Easter Island, for example, where his Collapse hypothesis is generally regarded by people who actually study the island's history and prehistory as wildly off-base and unsupported by evidence).

This book was clearly written by someone who had a theory (Collapse) and went looking for evidence to justify it. Fine, I suppose, but that's the opposite of a scientific approach (examine evidence and search for a theory to explain it).

Stylistically, his tendency to repeat every point two or three or four times might be helpful in the classroom, but it's irritating to read.

Overall, my strong recommendation is not to bother with this book. Seriously, it's almost impossible to distinguish between the assertions that are supported by evidence and accepted by experts and those that are just Jared Diamond's speculation. Unfortunately, this hit the bestseller list and lots of his speculation became accepted by intelligent people who don't happen to be experts.

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."

Cuốn sách giấy khổ lớn với 800 trang nội dung và 50 trang giới thiệu tài liệu đọc thêm này quả là một công trình đáng giá nghiên cứu về những tác động của môi trường đến vận mệnh của một xã hội, và của thế giới.
Trước khi đọc cuốn này, mình đã hiểu rằng môi trường rất quan trọng, rằng môi trường đang xuống cấp hàng ngày, rằng chúng ta có thể góp phần làm môi trường tốt hơn qua từng hành động nhỏ, bla bla bla... Nhưng khi đọc Sụp đổ, nhìn môi trường ở khía cạnh vĩ mô, ở góc độ quản lý tầm chính phủ và quốc tế thì mới nhận thức được sự nghiêm trọng của tình hình thực tế mà mình đang trải nghiệm.
Cuốn sách đáng đọc. Đọc để biết sợ hãi với những điều tưởng nhỏ nhặt, mà đã góp phần lớn làm nên sự sụp đổ của những đế chế hùng mạnh trong quá khứ. Đọc, để hiểu và ý thức hơn về thế giới hôm nay. Đọc, để vẫn hi vọng, và mỗi ngày cố gắng vì một cuộc sống bền vững cho thế hệ con cháu ngày mai.

Extensive study on what are the main factors that force societies to collapse and others not collapse.

Can be used build studies on modern day societies collapse also.

Fascinating work by the same author who won a Pulitzer prize for Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

This exhaustive study in Malthusian economics as applied to several societies in history that have failed, such as the Easter Islanders and Greenland Norse, details the thematic traits common to each example. His chapter on Easter Island made me think of Thor Heyerdahl's work there.

Most notably is how deforestation and imprudent population control applies to modern societies in trouble as well. I find myself thinking about this work frequently, his ideas resonate with our times, mirroring as they do, and as he shows us, with failed societies of the past.

Haunting and thought provoking and a damn fine book.

** 2018 addendum - it is a testament to great literature that a reader recalls the work years later and this is a book about which I frequently think. When I think about this book, I think about the Greenland Norse and the Polynesians. Great book.

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.

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)

-Interesante pero insistente.-

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. Aproximación a los fenómenos que marcan que unas sociedades hayan florecido y otras hayan terminado desapareciendo a lo largo de neustra historia, desde ópticas pertenecientes a distintas disciplinas y apoyado en situaciones bastante documentadas en su mayoría, además de abordar cuestiones de actualidad al respecto.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....