Monday, July 8, 2013

Book Review: Collapse by Jared Diamond

Read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Similar to his other famous book Guns, Germs and Steel, the breath of material he covers in this book is amazing. This is the opposite end to the kind of books celebrities & authors who churn out dozens of manuscripts produce, where each piece has some little idea or observation with a lot of fluff around it making up some 200 pages. Since Diamond is a Professor in UCLA, he teaches graduate level courses based on this book material.

This 500+ page long book takes us on a nice guided tour of current and ancient civilizations. It starts out in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana and continues on to discuss Easter Islands, Pitcarin and Henderson Islands, The Anasazis, Mayans, Vikings and Fugues, Japan, Somalia, Greenland's Norse, Rwanda/Burundi, Tikopia Island, Haiti Vs. Dominican Republic, Russia, China, Australia and so on darting back and forth in the timeline, geography and civilizations. (As usual India is hardly mentioned anywhere but for a line or two in passing. :-)

Underlying theme is that societies that thrive for several centuries can collapse precipitously just in a decade if attention is not paid to few factors. He distills them into the following five:
- Environmental damage caused by the society
- Climate change
- Hostile neighbors
- Friendly trade partners
- Society's reaction to its environmental problems

It may look like points 1 & 5 could be combined into one and similarly 3 & 4 could be combined into one. Still this gives a framework through which he analyzes multiple societies both in the past and present, some successful and many failed ones. His conclusion is that if we don't pay attention to these factors, our current societies are also vulnerable to such catastrophic collapse. Though some may argue that scientific advancement, communication technology and our awareness of what goes on in different parts of the world will allow us to react to changes to prevent such a collapse, he elaborately argues that it need not be the case. Compared to Easter Island society, we may be much bigger but that gargantuan size can lead to faster environmental damage that may be hard to reverse and a setup with a lot of built-in inertia to implement changes quickly. Globalization also ensures that no one is isolated from changes taking place in one part of the world. So, such collapses to even countries/societies like US are very real possibilities.

The comparison study of Haiti Vs. Dominican Republic is fascinating. While both countries are part of the same island and are poor countries, comparatively DR is in much better shape due to its policies where as Haiti is in miserable condition despite possessing same resources. In another case study he compares the lives of Norse and Inuit in Greenland. The Norse from Norway moved into Greenland and lived there for 450 years and then were forced out of existence completely not being able to survive, though the local Inuits have been successfully living in the Arctic for 1000's of years. There seems to be 4 reasons as to why the Norse vanished from Greenland.
- Fluctuating weather cycles. They entered Greenland during a mild period that was conducive to invasion & settling down but made them complacent.
- Their preconceived ideas of how to live based on the Norwegian society's living style and values helped them first but then lead to their decline.
- They looked down upon Inuit and refused to learn from them.
- The powerful, wealthy Norse had short term interests that were counter to their long term well being.
These observations seem to fit into the five point framework he provides early. As he works through the material the amount of information he throws around is quite impressive. There is a long description as to how the Inuit kayaks are custom made for individuals, thus converting kayak into something the Inuit "wear" as an extension of their clothing as one kayak won't fit the next guy in line. I never viewed the kayak in this way. In a different chapter he describes in detail as to how similar to cross sectional tree rings that are used to study the age of trees, pollen found in successive layers of mud is studied to create a record of weather patterns (how extreme snow was in a year, etc.) spanning decades, cross checking it with tree rings found in the same geographical area. Extremely slow and painstaking research explained well.

The last item on this list is perhaps the most important take away. As societies evolve beyond initial stages where everyone is involved in subsistence agriculture, a class structure gets setup. People on top of this pyramid were kings/queens/chieftains in olden days and billionaires today. This ruling class is usually insulated from negative impacts of their and the society’s actions. So, they become oblivious, fail to take corrective actions though they are the ones with power that could implement changes. They become more and more preoccupied with palace intrigues, fine-tuning laws to favor them, topping the billionaire lists and thus maintaining their hold on power. This “Let them eat cake” mentality might look like an historical artifact that cannot repeat today due to instant communication, democracy, etc. But how the near collapse of the banking system late last decade hardly affected the top bosses could serve as a clear illustration that it applies to contemporary societies as well. We can also argue that the collapse of the US Auto industry, the collapse of the railroad industry before that, collapse of the canal industry before that are all cases in point. In the end when the whole system/society goes down, it takes down everyone with it.

While the title and the framework may paint the author as a rabid environmentalist, he does talk in detail about specific MNC efforts to be environmentally friendly as it makes good business sense for them in the long run. He encourages his readers to strongly support such companies and points out Chevron's oil exploration operation in Papua New Guinea as one such excellent example. This book is certainly worth the read. In addition to this book, there are good lectures given by him on this topic available on TED.com site.

-sundar.

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