Collapse

A greatly compelling book that articulates a fairly systematic and evidence-based understanding of what causes social collapse. Some further reading suggests he may have had a few of the facts wrong here or there, or that he should have looked more closely at some of the interpretations he had, but overall it's a solid work as far as I can tell.

It's also received a lot of criticism from certain quarters, and they all seem to hinge on people reading summaries of the book or hearing about it from someone else, so I strongly, strongly encourage you to read the entire thing and understand all the specific points in their respective context. It's not the book I was expecting to read based on the criticisms I'd heard.

To summarize the most common complaints:

1) Diamond barely mentions climate change at all, so I can only assume critics who accuse him of pushing a climate change "agenda" haven't really read the book very closely.

2) Diamond doesn't push environmental determinism, or generally claim that environmental conditions alone determine the rise and fall of societies. The multiple chapters dedicated to the Greenland experience of the Norse and the Inuit, who shared an environment but experienced different outcomes, is the clearest example that he is interested in the impact of culture and human agency on outcomes.

3) Diamond's thesis does not rest on his claim that the Greenland Norse didn't eat fish, despite this being a remarkably common criticism. The fish thing is an area where Diamond indeed may have been either outright wrong or at least oversimplifying the data. Luckily, there are so many other features of the Greenland Norse and Inuit experience he describes that I don't think removing the fish claim entirely would change the fundamental point much.

4) Diamond doesn't claim that the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) were stupid or self-destructive - his key thesis is that Rapa Nui's environmental conditions were different to those of other Pacific islands in ways that challenged socioeconomic models of Polynesian society that were sustainable on other Pacific islands. He also references a number of archaeological findings that his critics claim he ignored (such as changes in midden contents relating to diet, and rat-chewed palm nuts). The main issue I've seen with that chapter is that he doesn't dive into evidence for the island's population being higher in the past - but I have yet to find any critics providing evidence that the island's population has been stable, so that whole question seems like a wash, unfortunately.

To in short - it's not a climate change screed, it's not a Europe-hating manifesto for technological primitivism, it's not a colonial white supremacy pamphlet, and it's not a case for environmental determinism.

It's an exploration of the ways in which soil quality, water salinity, wind currents, biological resources, and topography pose challenges to human societies, or provide opportunity for them to flourish. It's an imperfect but interesting read that provides some much-needed perspective on our relationship to the material world around us, and I recommend closely reading it.

You probably know the author from his masterpiece Guns, Germs and Steel. If you do, you know what to expect from this book. The same thorough explanations, the vast array of interconnected factors, all grounded on scientific data.

This is not the book for those who truly want an optimistic view of what the future holds for us. The title says it all: collapse. So the author guides us through many paradigmatic collapses of civilizations that acted either greedy, naively, or simply recklessly.

11 years from its publication and the rate of global destruction has not halted — in fact, it is accelerating, as predicted by those who are often called pessimists. So, in a sense, Jared Diamond’s call to action to make the change happen has not come to fruition. However, if you happen to read this book, you’ll probably become one amongst many contributing to at least slow down the rate of destruction. And that, by itself, if anything else, makes reading this book something truly worthy of your time.

This book is a must read for environmentalist minded folk, in that it provides clear reference to historical examples of environmentally triggered collapses of societies. We can utilize this information in not only strengthening the call of warning that is building momentum and movement towards sustainable business practices and governmental policy, but furthermore towards achieving a vision for the future.

Jared Diamond's text can be boring at times, once you've gotten the gist of his purpose, but I found it enriching as a whole, and exciting from time to time. He dabbles in providing solutions and in critiquing modern society at the conclusion of the book, but I think perhaps he is better suited at providing clarity on the past as to how it relates to the present, rather than in looking at means of addressing the future.

For further reading on how to address these critical issues, I suggest [book: Common Wealth] by [author:Jeffrey Sachs], as well as literature on permaculture, such as [author: Bill Mollison], and restorative economies, such [author: Paul Hawken] or [author: Amory Lovins].