The tsunami disaster that struck on December 26, 2004 has captured world headlines like no other story since the terrorist attacks on NYC and Washington DC in 2001.
As no other phenomenon in living memory, the Indian Ocean earthquake and resulting in the killer waves comes as a reminder to all of us about the raw power of natural forces at work.
In Collapse, Jared Diamond uses that elemental power of nature as his foundation to what he is to tell you about as he looks at civilizations both ancient and modern in search of the reasons why some succeed and others fail.
Perhaps the difference here may be, unlike the tsunami tragedy, he claims societies can see their downfalls coming and human beings have a choice on how unprecedented situations will affect their futures.
Are we doomed? That’s the first question that comes to mind when you read Jared Diamond’s new book.
It’s a rather gloomy picture that he’s painting for us, but most of what he writes in the book are issues that we already know.
Not surprisingly, it turns out to be largely environmental. The more gripping question is why many civilizations were unable to avert destruction.
In examining one civilization after another, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse, he explores patterns of population growth, over-farming and overgrazing to the vicious circles of deforestation and erosion.
Diamond provides a host of answers, but after reading his rationale and interpretation of things that have happened in the past and are happening now… there comes a point when you start to think, are we doomed because of the inability of a society, and ultimately man, to change a dangerous but learned behavior, to plain selfishness?
You begin to perceive the mortal outline of our own civilization. He identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, trade partners (that is, alternative sources of essential goods), environmental problems, and, finally, a society's response to its environmental problems.
The first four may or may not prove significant in each society's demise, Diamond claims, but the fifth always does. The salient point, of course, is that a society's response to environmental problems is completely within its control, which is not always true of the other factors.
In other words, as his subtitle puts it, a society can "choose to fail."
Another good point that he brings up which can have scary consequences is that people are destroying their future with actions that make perfect sense at the time, such as chopping down trees to plant crops.
The diversity of the case studies he uses (both past and present) is extraordinary. His starting point and most lovingly elaborated case study is Easter Island ("the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources"), which he invites the reader to see as a "metaphor, a worst-case scenario for what may lie ahead of us in our own future".
What, then, does Diamond suggest societies do to survive and excel, now that we know the root to why some go down the path of failure?
A "courageous, successful long-term planning," he says, which needs to be undertaken by some governments and political leaders.
We will also, he says, need to reconsider some of our core values, and he cites a few examples of modern societies that have done this (e.g., over two decades ago China decided to restrict the traditional freedom of individual reproductive choice).
In the chapter, "The World as a Polder", Diamond ends on an optimistic note - that even as the threat of ecological meltdown seems to get greater by the year, so too does our level awareness and recognition of our interdependence with our other globla villagers.
And this is crucial, according to Diamond, if we were to secure any kind of sustainable future.
His take on things remind me of a korean proverb that says "Man cannot be alone, he was not born to be alone but to be part of society, and you need others to help you survive." How true...
The worst of times brings out the best in humans... we're seeing extraordinary response from people worldwide, and aid and support from the rich world to those countries shattered by the Indian Ocean tsunami.
This is precisely the kind of empathy and engagement on which our ability to avoid ecological collapse will surely depend. Diamond would be happy to see that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JARED DIAMOND is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until recently he was Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine.
He is the author of the recently published Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies, which also is the winner of Britain's 1998 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize.
Dr. Diamond is also the author of two other trade books: The Third Chimpanzee, which won The Los Angeles Times Book award for the best science book of 1992 and Britain's 1992 Rhone-Poulenc Science Book Prize; and Why is Sex Fun? (Science Masters Series).
Dr. Diamond is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship ("Genius Award"); research prizes of the American Physiological Society, National Geographic Society, and Zoological Society of San Diego; and many teaching awards and endowed public lectureships. In addition, he has been elected a member of all three of the leading national scientific/academic honorary societies (National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society).
His field experience includes 17 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands, to study ecology and evolution of birds; rediscovery of New Guinea's long-lost golden fronted bowerbird; other field projects in North America, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.
As a conservationist he devised a comprehensive plan, almost all of which was subsequently implemented, for Indonesian New Guinea's national park system; numerous field projects for the Indonesian government and World Wildlife Fund; founding member of the board of the Society of Conservation Biology; member of the Board of Directors of World Wildlife Fund/USA. |
Suzanne Jung, is a presenter with Prime Time Morning. | |
