The Ends of the World as We Know Them

NY Times ^ | January 1, 2005 | JARED DIAMOND

[neverdem]

Even if you don't agree with the apparent philosophy the author seems to recommend, the history lessons are quite interesting, assuming his descriptions are accurate. Happy New Year!

[neverdem]

Ping and Happy New Year!

[buccaneer81]

and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools

Uh...that descibes me here in Columbus. So shoot me. I am not contributing to the fall of Western Society.

[hinckley buzzard]

"History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly."

Must be public school history. Rome took centuries to "fall."

[atomicweeder]

It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools.

Increased secularism, affirmative action, and irrational concerns about criminal rights have all contributed to the collapse of cities. The courts prevent law-abiding citizens from doing anything about it -- so people create their own communities.

[Texasforever]

It is folly to try to relate the fall of the Mayans to the United States or any other western country. The threat to the world right now is the refusal of a large part of the world to emerge from the days of the Mayans. There is an unsustainable tension between the people that are in the 21st century and those of the 7th century that continue to demand their right to live their primitive lives while at the same time asking the rest to provide the aid required to sustain their every day needs. There is no excuse for countries like Indonesia that is tremendously wealthy in natural resources and population to not have the infrastructure required to withstand a disaster even as large as this one. When 2/3 of the worlds population is dependent on the other third for just their every day existence then that is the threat to all of the western world NOT the environment.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Sounds like another Paul Ehrlich to me.

Compare

"In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful reappraisals to face. Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world."

With

"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. Five years is all we have left if we are going to preserve any kind of quality in the world." Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970.

It's all baloney, all of it.

[Monti Cello]

The NYT was very kind to provide a well-timed editorial page book plug. Perhaps I am too generous -- it does fit the NYT political agenda.

I have not read Collapse. Guns, Germs and Steel was a good book. but Diamond seemed woefully ignorant of the cultural and societal basis of modern western advance.

Here I suspect the same. The Anasazi and Maya were undermined by regional drought over a small area in inherently marginal environments, and single-track economies which couldn't adapt.

The modern US is no less dependent on natural underpinnings, but with a deversified economy, global trade, and a huge landmass, as well as a highly adaptable culture, we are well-hedged against short-term climate changes.

Not so with regard to longer-term energy supplies, hence the attention to the middle east in our foreign affairs.

With properly functioning market signals we can easily adapt to this as well.

Diamond seems to suffer from the common scientific hubris that one's area of study is all-important. He skates very close to environmental determininsm in my opinion, and fails to appreciate the forces behind American supremacy, and the fact that our economy is capable of remaking itself as quickly as nature deals challenges.

[JimSEA]

Jared Diamond is alway interesting to read -- agree with him or not. His Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good and thoughtfull read.

[ModelBreaker]

The one factor the author never mentions is decadence.

[Uncle Miltie]

"Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going"

Confirmed by exactly no data.

With Bush's semi-landslide, I'd say we are less divided than at any time since Reagan.

[bowzer313]

I have reached a point in life where I dismiss ALL leftist diatribes and "analyses" about the "coming collapse of America" as absolute, unadulterated, rank bulls**t. Including this one. There is no leftist on earth who can generate a meaningful critique of America, the greatest nation in the history of the planet, because they are immersed in asinine Marxist ideology that is fundamentally averse to recognizing the historical basis for America's rise to greatness. That is, a culture of freedom, reflected in our societal appreciation of individual liberty and property rights. No other nation on earth has such a history and tradition. The only thing that will destroy this country and undercut our position as "global hyperpower"is if the people here lose their minds and buy this leftist tripe enough to implement the Marxist policies pushed by the congenitally blind and terminally stupid "intellectual elites".

[rpgdfmx]

When 2/3 of the worlds population is dependent on the other third for just their every day existence

. OTOH, 4% of the world is dependent on resources from the other 96%. I'm not sure the U.S. (and the other richest nations) would be dominant if they lost access to those resources, or had to compete with the rest of the planet for them on a (hypothetical) even playing field.

[Maynerd]

Jared Diamond is alway interesting to read -- agree with him or not. His Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good and thoughtfull read.

Gun Germs, and Steel has interesting parts but the whole is standard left wing academic claptrap. Mr. Diamond attempts to claim the West dominates the world due to its happenstance of geography, domesticatable animals, indigenous plants, etc. He ignores culture and religion.

I don't mind academics claiming all peoples and cultures are equal but when Mr. Diamond claimed that New Guinea natives are more intelligent than Westerners because of their ability to survive in the jungle and not get lost or eaten by wild animals, I damn near through the book in the trash can. He is infected with the all too common disease of academics - antiwestern, anticapitalism, & antichristian bigotry.

[MissAmericanPie]

Go back through history, what has killed off powerful civilizations is multiculturalism, and totalitarianism, making gods of men. We have a government that is happy to throw million and billions that we don't have to every worthless cause on the planet while ignoring the important things that need attention to.

Charge it, and pay the interest only on the debt leads to financial collapse eventually, especially when there is an on going war regarding the worth of the dollar world wide.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

How about the mitigating factor of Democracy?

[Nachoman]

This must have been written before the tsunami. I bet he's as giddy as a school girl now that there a whole lot less people to compete with for limited resources.

[UCANSEE2]

They had stone tools. They did wonders with them.

We have advanced stone tools. Silicon.
We have the ability to solve our main problems by sharing information, and sharing the responsibility.

The internet is a very powerful tool. One can research just about any subject, on a scale unavailable in the past.

One can participate in the responsibility for the government and the status of the land, and make a difference.

They say two heads are better than one, and I have been here on FR for some time, and there are about 2-3 other people actively discussing something, with probably hundreds lurking. Any postulation that something is fact, can and will be scrutinzed by many, including those who are deep into that particular field. The best way to get those who 'know' about a subject to share their wealth, is to ask.

CSI, wasn't it? "To get the right answer, you have to ask the right question".

I found it hard to devote time to reading all posts on a thread before commenting. Many never bother. Some only view posts-to-them. That is a waste of resources.

Science Fiction prompted me to read so much that I learned to speed read. If I couldn't read very fast, I would be challenged by trying to read everyone's comments. But I find that more information can be learned from everyone else, than I ever could using a library,sending off to verious sources for plans, documents, maps, etc.

AND THE COST. Woah.

You are so correct,BTW. The tools will never save one life. A person using the tool can.

If we don't use our tool well, then maybe the cavemen were 'smarter' than us, using their tools more wisely.

[Iris7]

Long lasting societies are characterized by prudent governments. This means that Lefties are carefully kept from gaining power, amongst other things, of which religious uniformity is the most important.

The USA was built on the anglo-saxon protestants, and we all mine the ruins left by that long gone culture. Look what has happened to the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and now the Methodists if you can't agree with my first sentence.

Long lasting Republics have had very restricted franchises. The longest lasting Republic was Venice, maybe 800 years, which had something like ten voters. Uniformly Catholic, of course. Try that here.

The Swiss Canton system has lasted a long time. It is a development of the German clan system. Shows signs of decay and creeping Leftism (same thing).

The Japanese system is only post Meiji and post MacArthur, but has held together for perhaps a thousand years under various types of government because of ethnic uniformity and fear of Chinese invasion. The universal religion is Shinto with a little Buddist metaphor added, and is basically tribal.

The previous is greatly simplified but much better history than that Jared Diamond claptrap.

[jazzlite]

Yes, decadence and secularism are important determinants of societal destruction. Drug addiction and sexual practices which spread disease and sometimes cause the creation of new and vicious viruses also bring down societies. History has been altered many times through epidemics of disease. The pollutants which effect human behavior through the breakdown of basic morality are no less important than the erosion of the land and toxic pollutants in the air..