Posted 5 years, 8 months ago around lunchtime by oso
I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s New York Times Op-Ed, The Ends of the World as We Know Them; filled with much food for thought. Diamond is the author of Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, a book I often describe as my favorite amongst non-fiction. It sets out to explain that the rise of the West was fueled by, almost entirely, environmental and not genetic or even cultural, influences. Europe’s farmland was more fertile, European diseases were more lethal, guns and steel were more easily produced, etc.
In the forward he explains that the book is a covenant against all racist thinking which claims Western Civilization has lately been so successful because Aryans are, by nature, more capable. I agreed with much of what he wrote, but I thought that first book too quickly dismissed the cultural and societal differences which affect how we organize governance and how we treat our environment. Guns, Germs, and Steel took an extremely determined behaviorist perspective of individuals (not surprising since Diamond is a professor of physiology) in that every human being reacts to external factors similarly if not nearly identically.
Diamond’s forthcoming book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed confronts those exact questions that we probably all had after reading his first book. Given that it’s 600 pages and hard back, I probably won’t be reading it for a good while, but Diamond’s Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times has some interesting passages that echo a lot of what I’ve been thinking myself lately.
History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That’s why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape.
Could this happen in the United States? 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. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades.
Not just in Southern California, but all around the world, the spike in gated communities has be worried. It’s a trend which a lot of writers have noticed – more fences, more security guards, less integration. Pure kindle for a bon fire of riots and violence. Which is why I’m enthusiastic about the internet (so long as it remains fenceless) as well as the recent outpouring of compassion towards South Asia. It’s time to reintegrate and focus more on public commons and less on private security.
A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying support; now, it’s an act of self-interest to preserve our own economy and protect American lives.
That’s really the secret formula: global development = personal security
Unlike any previous society in history, our global society today is the first with the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of societies remote from us in space and in time. When the Maya and Mangarevans were cutting down their trees, there were no historians or archaeologists, no newspapers or television, to warn them of the consequences of their actions. We, on the other hand, have a detailed chronicle of human successes and failures at our disposal. Will we choose to use it?
You might be interested in this critique of Diamond by an Economist.
first i wanted to comment on the Aryan argument, “all racist thinking which claims Western Civilization has lately been so successful because Aryans are, by nature, more capable.” a comment such as this would rely soley on how the word “successful” is defined.
a prominent feature of how success is defined in the U.S. is through monetary definitions. i often think about the term “third-world country”, and what it describes and entails. such that a country is automatically subverviant, subdominant and less important to the Western “standard”. perhaps it might help if the countries were viewed as being different, but not less important.
when you look at helping out coutries from the “third-world” perspective, you see one “important” country giving to a “less-important” country. this fits one definition of charity.
another vision would be to look at charity as goodwill for the benefit of humankind. instead of goodwill towards another country or person, who is less than me, and should be grateful towards me.
i like the charity for humankind idea better because it looks at countries as just being different in structure and tastes, as opposed to a set ideal of how success can be defined. because i think success is a subjective thing.
but is charity just a way for one country to give to another country, so that it can worry less about being attacked later?
i think religion plays a part in this question because every major country in the world has a geographically identifiable religion. and, i would guess that something like “charity” would be a part of all the major religions, eastern or western. and although there is a litigal separation of state and religion (in America), the two will always be intertwined because govt is made up of people, and people inherently create nuances in reality.
i think the Western governments are in prominent and long standing positions to stay in power, and consistently remain. they have learned from past cultures, and are identifying new ways to convince people of what they think is correct.
for instance, look at how Media Outlets have become increasingly homogenized, and therefore biased. indeed, i think it can be ascertained that most top executives of large media outlets, TV, newspaper, and magazine, probably identify more liberally than conservative (as compared to the US national average).
however, an exception to this is the overt, and somewhat obtuse Fox News, which has just signed a deal with Clear Channel Radio to be the “sole news provider” of all CC stations. Clear Channel owns approx 1,300 stations in the US alone, a lambastic amount. additionally, CC owns approx 35% of the billboards, a slew of music venues, and a fair amount of public land (and that’s just in the US). this is a perfect example of how one school of thought (the conservatives) can put out their opinions. what’s more, this is the tip of the iceburg when dealing with the amount of ownership by Rupert Murdoch and Lowry Mays in the media business.
media is how the govt controls people, and gets them to coalesce to “popular opinion”. i think that this would be one very direct “new” way that the Western Govt has learned from the past, and is preventing for the future.
although, i think that the 2-party system could cause some problems in the near future for the US, unless the demographics of the parties start to cross political lines.
also, i think the US might be setting itself up for a fall by a lack of fundamentals in education, realization, and contemplative thinking. whereas, in some other countries they are emphasized more. fundamentals are important. ask anyone who’s good at anything.
governments can only protect themselves by learning from situations that have happened in history. obviously, because they can’t prevent for something that has never happened; although they can speculate and anticipate.
that’s why 9/11, strictly from an attack standpoint, was a success from the perpetrators. similar attacks have taken place in the past, but none have come on such a large scale.
in the French film, “the Barbarian Invasions”, there is a small insignficant (to the plot) sequence where a film shot is shown of the attack on the Towers from ground level. afterwards, it shows a French political analyst speaking and he says something like, “9/11 represented the first time that the U.S. government have allowed an ‘outside’ force into its boudaries. not the periphery, but the heart. it’s the first time that the Barbarians were able to invade.” the last line involves the title of the film. it’s an interesting idea…and from a perspective that is outside the U.S.
in the end, and towards the future, i think there will be an endless list of problems, which could cause an endless sense of change. and some people will like that change, and some won’t.
HP,
Thanks for the link – I thought a lot of what Don Boudreaux said was interesting, but just like he calls Diamond’s op-ed “adolescent” I thought his review was adolescent.
Both Don and I agree you can’t “anthropomorphize human collectives” (since when did conservatives start using such big words? jk.), but he is obviously a skeptic of the Commons while I am a radical supporter of maximizing that which is shared and public (like parks, the internet, the beach, etc.)
I tried to read through each of his links – found the Property Rights and Tragedy of the Commons pieces interesting, but couldn’t pay attention to what he called ” Matt Yglesias’s rebuttal of one of Diamond’s important empirical claims.” Something about whether Nordic people still eat fish.
Anyway, keep the Neocon propoganda coming my way, the reaffirmation always feels nice.
Oops, I forgot to spread my own leftie manifest destiny.
A Renaissance of the Commons
Joseph Chamie – chief demographer of the United Nations
Oh the irony. Your intelligence amazes me more and more everyday. Did you know that Matt Yglesias is a liberal? In fact, he won the Best Liberal Blog award, a few weeks back. He is the only liberal linked to in that whole discussion. Yet you found him the least interesting.
There is hope for you yet.
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Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, sustains an erroneous mental model of the Norse in Greenland during the Little Ice Age. The evidence shows that the Norse in Greenland walked across the frozen Davis Strait to become ancestors of thirty-one tribes. Multiple evidence to support this statement is presented in http://www.frozentrail.org.
For example: The Old Norse and the Algonquin-speaking people had over 15,000 phrases with similar sounds and meanings.
Historical documents on two continents record the Greenland migration story. Three Walam Olum verses describe how the Norse, using a republican government, made the right decision to walk across the frozen sea.
Mr. Diamond is continuing to sustain the erroneous European model (Nothing written in Europe; nothing). The Norse in Greenland had a mental model based on first hand knowledge of the evidence. It saved their lives. Survival, even today, requires a workable mental model supported by evidence.
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If you’re not tired of the back and forth over Diamond’s book, perpetuated largely by people like me who haven’t read the book (yet), then check out this polite but scathing critique by Gregg Easterbrook in response to which Philalethes rips Easterbrook a new one. I’m rooting for Philalethes.
Oh, yeah, and if you’re still fascinated by all of this, see what it has to do with libraries.
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Myron,
Ya know, I had the exact same thought. It’s funny how easy someone’ll buy an erroneous mental model without really thinking about it you know?
Prentiss,
Thanks for the links. I’m taking them with me to go.
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My name is Chris O’Connor and I run an online nonfiction book discussion community called BookTalk.org. This is an invitation for you to check us out and hopefully get involved in the book discussion. We read almost exclusively science too!
We’re currently reading Collapse and expect to have a live online chat session with Professor Diamond near the end of June. You and your friends are invited and encouraged to join us in the discussion and chat session.
Here is a list of past authors that we’ve read and had as guests in our chat room…
Upcoming Author Chats
A. C. Grayling – pending
Jane Goodall – pending
Howard Bloom – pending
Jared Diamond – pending
Chat and Interview Transcripts
Howard Bloom – Reinventing Capitalism
Lee Harris – Civilization & Its Enemies
Ann Druyan – Pale Blue Dot
Michael Shermer – How We Believe
Matt Ridley – The Red Queen
Stephen Pinker – The Blank Slate
Massimo Pigliucci – Rationally Speaking
Richard Dawkins – Unweaving the Rainbow
Howard Bloom – Global Brain
Howard Bloom – The Lucifer Principle
Feel free to ask questions or simple visit the following links… And please spread the word to your science-minded friends.
http://www.booktalk.org/index.php Home
http://pub141.ezboard.com/bbooktalk Forums
http://p090.ezboard.com/fbooktalkfrm87 Collapse forum
http://p090.ezboard.com/fbooktalkfrm51 Guns, Germs And Steel forum
Chris
Chris O’Connor
BookTalk.org – the freethinkers book discussion community
http://www.booktalk.org
chris@booktalk.org
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Chris