Jared Diamond - Collapse

[Freewheeling Andy]

The Vikings reached Greenland near the end of the first millennium. They didn't reach a "green land", and they didn't find massively fertile valleys. This is how the Greenland of the Vikings is sometimes depicted, because they arrived and lived for several centuries during the climatic "Mediaeval Warm Period". It is often simply characterised that the change to a colder "little Ice Age" around 1350 led to their demise.

 

Although this is partially true, Jared Diamond thoughtfully assesses a more accurate view of the Greenland Norse, how they arrived in an already fragile environment, imported cultural mores from Europe that weren't appropriate, damaged their own environment as a result, and didn't learn from the Inuit. The decisions made by the Greenland Norse led to their initial survival in a fragile environment, and then the failure of the society.

 

Assessing not just Greenland, but a number of other civilisations such as the Maya, Anasazi, those on Easter Island and Pitcairn Island, Diamond traces the causes of failure, and looks for connecting patterns. He also looks at societies which have succeeded against the odds, such as the Vikings in Iceland (whoever thought it was the world's most environmentally damaged country?), the Japanese under Tokugawa and others.

 

He then tries to thread the history with the present, looking at the damage we are doing to the planet now, and how we are pushing the limits of sustainability, and the risks we are now under, and he tries to point us to the lessons from the past that we can learn, to prevent repeats of disaster.

 

The prominent piece of all this is damage to the environment, largely through deforestation and soil damage. Do not, though, mistake this book for something like Silent Spring. It's not an eco-warrior's polemic. It's a serious assessment of where we are in terms of previous societal collapses.

 

The book is chunky, at 525 pages of small font. It's full of history, of archaeology, of science. But that doesn't make it hard to read. It took me a while to get through because it's inevitably fragmented into various narratives of different societies (and you know the ending). Diamond's writing is easy, fluid, and he gets serious information across in a very readable way.

 

If I have any criticisms, it's the self-referential way he writes, always talking about the book's own framework and structure, making it sometimes feel like an academic paper, or a lecture course (and it was based on a lecture course). I also found the way he repeatedly defended ancient cultures with the "They didn't have the technology to know the mistakes they were making, so we can't blame them" line. The line is correct, and reasonable, but in the introduction he already made it implicit, and even (correctly) had a bit of a go at the new-age nutters who claim that, say, native Americans know how to tend the land so how can you say the Anasazi ruined their own environment. So it didn't need rehashing repeatedly, making the first half of the book on ancient cultures seem defensive at times.

 

The second half of the book, about the modern world and the damage we're doing is more judgemental, and better for it, although to me it becomes a very depressing read, where Diamond feels like he clutches at straws to give us optimism for the future.

 

A fascinating and enlightening book, though, which offers strange pointers to the future, and challenges your preconceptions on what is right and wrong, good and bad, for the future of mankind.

[Philip Stein]

Thanks for taking the time to review this Andy. I've seen Collapse in the bookshops but have been frankly put off by that tiny font and thick spine... Perhaps I shouldn't be!

[Freewheeling Andy]

The tiny font and thick spine and depressing material make it a fairly big task to read, but the writing is relatively easy and the subject is fascinating and spectacularly wide.

[magdadh]

I think it was significantly worse that Guns, Germs and Steel; padded out unnecessarily with personal life stories of Montanans and similar, and his solutions - considering that according to his diagnosis we are on a brink of disaster - are bit on a mild side.

 

But still worth reading, for me especially for the Vikings. They didn't eat fish. In Greenland. Amazing.

[jjzazzy]

I really liked this book, along with "World Without us" Alan Wiesman.

Niether is really fiction though....

A recomended read for envrionmental types...

 

jjzazzy