Article 2 - REVIEW OF "COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED" May 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    Why do some societies and culture survive and thrive, and why do many others collapse and fail? In "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed", author Jared Diamond explores several societies asking this very question, developing criteria to explain why some cultures thrive, and others don't. For the most part, these criteria are based on ecological factors, sometimes created by humans, other times being natural phenomena that determines a society based on the culture's response to it. In using this criteria, he is also determining whether the society we live in today will be one of those that survive, or one that falls into ruins like those he studies and analyzes.

    The Pulitzer-Prize winner for "Guns, Germs and Steel", Diamond uses his experience as a professor of geography and expertise as an evolutionary biologist to study how various societies of both the present and the past have risen, and in many cases, fallen. In beginning his case, which in the end is to show how first-world United States needs to heed warnings before it reaches its own collapse, Diamond studies two farms in Montana. His purpose is to show how even in what is known as an environmentally pristine atmosphere where people spend a great deal of money to partake in recreational activities, the signs of environmental damage are already present. This is just the beginning in a long line of investigations into various societies, including more famous ones such as Easter Island and the Mayans, to lesser known civilizations such as Pitcairn Islands. He also does comparison studies, wondering why the Inuit of Greenland survived and the Greenland Vikings disappeared, even though the shared the same land at the same time.

    Diamond uses five criteria to determine how societies make it, or don't. In every case study, the author applies these factors to see how a culture has made it, such as New Guinea, or not, like the faltering society of Haiti or war-torn Rwanda. Or, in the case of countries like China and Australia, the society is in the netherworld of a present limbo that still has time to turn down one road or the other. The criteria are: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and most critically, the society's response to these four present factors.

    Many of Diamond's arguments are fairly standard, basically amounting to a society collapses because it takes out more from the environment than what it puts back in, which is why some societies like the Dominican Republic is thriving and its next door neighbor Haiti, sharing the same island of Hispaniola, is crashing down on itself despite similar climate. The case of being stuck in cultural norms that one is unwilling to break, such as the Vikings, is also not anything very novel. But "Collapse" is a great read simply because the breadth of scope it covers in both geography and history. From the ruins of the Mayans to the factories of modern China and the geothermal pools of ecologically poor but still thriving Iceland, Diamond takes the reader through a guide to the past, present, and perhaps the future by describing how people react to and manage the resources around them. His variety of comparisons tend to yield interesting arguments: in the case of the Vikings, by comparing the society of Greenland to Iceland, he shows how the Vikings survived in one and collapsed in the other. By comparing societies and not geography, he compares the Inuit to the Vikings in Greenland, showing how one survived and one failed. In other words, it is not one particular locale or culture that determines the survival or demise of a society, rather, as he puts it, how a society reacts to the circumstances around them that determines survival. Sometimes the factors will lead to survival, and sometimes they will not.

    Diamond gives some ideas as to what to do to avoid collapse, though his suggestions to me came off somewhat vague. Diamond also seems to omit the factor of disease being a culprit in collapse, which probably had some contribution to the collapse of Easter Island and the Mayan culture. Instead, he indirectly infers to it under the guise of hostile neighbors, which in these cases had more to do with the hostile invaders of Europe. And many of the so-called successes in overcoming ecological disasters, such as Japan, seem to only been victorious through the exploitation of the natural resources of other nations, such as Japan's importing of timber from the already decimated Australian landscape. Considering his allusion to the idea that all societies are linked through globalization, this hardly seems like a real long term plan to success. Despite any disagreements, however, "Collapse" is a fascinating read, despite its weighty 525 pages. For an intriguing overview and a world tour of how we are all interconnected ecologically no matter what the culture, "Collapse" is an informative discourse and fine read.