Review of Collapse

Collapse. How societies choose to fail or succeed. By Jared Diamond.

'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'

I thought this was a Cicero quote, but Google and Wikipedia combine to tell me it was George Santayana in 1905. I'm still not convinced. Such is the human memory, an unreliable thing. It is also human behavior to cling to false knowledge or seek help from the divine, and so the quote is pertinent in several ways.

In this book Jared Diamond seeks to find the causes, and if any, some common link between societies that have collapsed. Can we learn from the mistakes they made and prevent our own collapse, even if this means we must drop some of our long held beliefs? It does seem that humanity, and the planet, is heading towards a crisis. But like the Emperors' clothes, we see only that which we wish to see or that we believe in until someone says, 'He's got no clothes'. The question is : What do you do when a small boy yells to you in the crowded streets as the Emperor's entourage rumbles by?

Jared Diamond is not the small boy. For those cries we have David Suzuki or Al Gore or any number of others, and as Jared Diamond explains, they have their essential place in all of this. This book is more about how we react when we know something is wrong. Just maybe it will leave you with cautious optimism. More likely it will make you wonder if how you live is more important than how long you live.

If you were a starving Greenland Viking would you have eaten fish, or was there some sort of religious taboo more powerful that life itself? On interviewing in Rwanda after the genocide researchers were frequently told 'there were too many people, some of them had to go.' And yet, still in Rwanda the birth rate is one of the highest in the world. A large family is seen as essential in one of the poorest and most densely populated countries on the planet. There is something to learn here. Something about ourselves.

The early chapters are dedicated to the analysis of a particular culture. Some - such as Easter Island - you will be familiar with. Less so Rwanda, Japan, Greenland, Australia, and many more. Of particular interest to me is Australia, where I live, and, I have to say, not yet in collapse. Australia is, however, likely to be the first country to run out of renewable resources before it runs out of non-renewables. Canberra, we have a problem. The Emperor has no clothes.

Jarad Diamond's first book, Guns Germs and Steel, analysed why some peoples were successful and others not. Why did some cultures invent ships and steel and guns and computers, while others lived on coconuts or remained hunter-gatherers? The racist implication of our imperial past was that some peoples were less intelligent than others. Is survival simply luck?

It is a similar theme here in a more global context. Luck does play a role - if we are lucky to be born in an area with good soil, water, minerals, climate, then, the well fed have more time to play, to invent, to discover. To remember the past and learn from it, but also perhaps, idle time to build monuments and have festivals that come to consume all the time and resources. If only the lords of Easter Island had stopped building statues and instead planted trees.

The island of Hispaniola serves another example of how it is what you do with your luck, how you manage and rule, that makes a difference. On one side, Haiti, and on the other, the Dominican Republic. Two cultures on the same island with vastly different outcomes. If you think politics is pointless, read that chapter.

Or on one small Pacific island that was blessed with an abundance of turtles. Trade with a nearby island thrived (in this context, nearby being a few hundred kilometres). However, they had no trees growing on their island and so were dependent for trade upon their neighbour, who could build canoes from the trees on their island. When an old canoe rotted they simply chopped down another tree. Being well fed on turtle and with idle time, one thing led to another and there was a population explosion. Each man must have a canoe, until there are no more.

One can imagine the turtle islanders waiting and wondering what happened. Why don't they visit anymore? Or the tree islanders, chopping down the last tree while dreaming of fresh turtle soup. Both islands are now uninhabited.

How like that island is our planet? Surely we have moved on since then? After all, were they not mere primitives, uneducated and disorganised? We are modern, intelligent, and can learn from the past. Maybe. But the depressing thing is it is not a single lesson that matters but the continual need to adapt and learn. It is the willingness to try new ways when the old stops working or to test and discard false beliefs. To borrow again from Google : 'Fail quickly'.

The final chapters examine some modern challenges we face and the un-nerving thing is that most of the same ones contributed to previous collapse of societies. And those collapses, when they came, came quickly.

Jarad Diamond summarises it best:

"Thus…the worlds environmental problems will get resolved, one way or another, in the lifetimes of the children or young adults of today."

If that worries you, at the very least get hold of a copy and read chapter 16.

My impression is that this book came from a series of lectures (Jared Diamond lectures at UCLA) hence quite some repetition and summary at the start of sections. In a book of this density this is an annoyance. One small but annoying thing is at times we have acres, hectares, square miles, kilometres. The book frequently bogs down in repetition and detail, and I know it did not have to be like this, because his summary of the world seafood industry comes as one very tight paragraph.

Ultimately, however, it is something everyone should read.

I wonder if there will be a sequel to this book, to be published in 2500. What will it say about us and our ability to remember the past and therefore, not repeat it? Or will 'Collapse' be found and analysed from among the dust and ruins, by aliens from some far off place?

first published in my blog: http://www.martinchambers.id.au/6-blog/book-review-collapse

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