Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

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The professed intent of this work is the establishment of an algorithm of survival, so to speak, based upon a close look at societies that didn't survive, for the most part. Quite quickly it becomes clear to the reader that cultural/ecological collapse is real but not so readily managed. As the author himself admits, one wonders what was on the mind of the man who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island. And yet this is an intriguing book, well researched, restrained for the most part, taking us to places and times we rarely think about to grasp the reality of how fragile our way of life really is. Along the way is the troubling discovery that yesterday, like today, man is his own worst enemy. Diamond's anthology does make a case that the entire planet is in trouble. But this author is meticulous and respectful: he succeeds in giving the reader a feel for local communities and regions, dissecting aspects of economy, geography, religion and human behaviors where people had real choices and made less inspired ones. One sees that similar processes are at work today in disparate parts of world, from Montana to Australia. I for one will forever feel guilty about broiling orange roughy on the Fridays of Lent. To give the reader some sense of his method, Diamond opens his works with a lengthy essay on the present day State of Montana. Big Sky Country is in trouble, though some folks in the Mountain Time Zone may bristle at his take on a state which has a reputation, at least, for self-sufficiency. The author calmly torpedoes a number of Montana's beliefs and practices, observing that were it a free standing nation, it would fall into Third World status. Diamond outlines a Montanan natural algorithm: its cool, dry, somewhat windy climate on the leeward side of mountains led settlers to seek an economy below the surface, where the state's only true industrial aged wealth resided--in mining. Diamond examines the relentless poisoning of Montana's land and water as a variety of natural toxins, set free in the mining process, began a century of steady leeching. The human expression of the survival algorithm comes into play in Montana quite vividly. For a number of reasons many citizens of the state resist government efforts to organize anything like zoning or greening. Centralization is political poison, a curious state of affairs for a state that gets a 150% return on its federal tax dollar. But Montana is hardly alone in its quirky thinking. Vikings on the verge of starvation in thirteenth century Greenland make considerable donations to the papal Crusade tax. Why people make the decisions they do is the one question Diamond never quite nails down with the precision of his other observations. Perhaps the best overriding definition of our global problems can be defined as "contemporary self interest." Just as Santayana warned of the dangers of not looking back, the author raises our awareness of looking toward the future. Although he traces nearly a dozen past and present civilizations, I found the lengthy tale of the Norsemen particularly compelling. The Vikings, having settled modern Scandinavia, began a near millennium of westward settlement. Iceland, with its climate and vegetation, was just marginal enough for permanent survival. The Viking settlement of Vinland, on the North American continent, ultimately broke down because warlike mannerisms were ultimately quashed by indigenous Indians. Greenland, however, was a slow and painful death of nearly five hundred years, where climate, technology, topography and hardheadedness eventually doomed a lengthy effort to colonize the great island. Diamond observed that the true tragedy of Greenland was the Norsemen's failure to learn from a surviving neighbor, the Inuit, who had mastered the boating, weaponry, and dietary limitations of the territory. This is not "Inconvenient Truth" tree hugging polemic. Rather than trumpet one big problem, the author dissects many overlooked smaller ones of the past, and sets them alongside similar potential strategies of the present day, in some cases species by species. In recent years I have developed a taste for Orange Roughy, a fish mass marketed in US shopping clubs. Diamond observes that most of the world's roughy is a product of the waters off Australia and New Zealand. Recent studies have found that this species does not begin to reproduce until the age of 40, and that most captured roughy is nearly a century old. At these numbers its reproduction will reduce exponentially [406]. Thus I am a kinsman of the last logger on Easter Island, grilling the last roughy on the patio. Roughy may seem like small potatoes, pardon the dietary allusion, but it is a good paradigm for more vital matters of fresh water, soil, food production, toxic waste, energy, and population. [Curiously, "global warming" is not a dominating theme of current day life problems, a sobering fact in itself.] Diamond discusses several international industry practices, particularly in matters of logging rain forests and drilling for oil. He devotes a chapter to "first world yuppies" who would dismiss his concerns as alarmist, again with a disarming humor--nobody has ever criticized a town for maintaining a fire house, he observes, if the town has but a few fires a year. [510] I do not know if Diamond is conversant with the writings of St. Augustine, the notably pessimistic Christian philosopher of the fifth century. At the risk of extremely generous paraphrasing, Augustine contended then that mankind is, religion notwithstanding, inherently flawed and selfish. Diamond does not say this directly, but his body of work does not make a liar of Augustine. Diamond's concern is not just that men are selfish and narrow sighted, but that there are a lot more men today, with more technology to do more questionable things. Perhaps prayer need be added to the algorithm of survival.

lectura amena, un poco lenta quizas, recalca mucho los mismos puntos a lo largo de los capitulos, pero finalmente es entretenido y puede hacerte ver las cosas que hacemos mal por el medio ambiente

英語の難易度、ページ数は他のレビュアーが触れているとおり。名詞以外は非常に簡単であり、歴史、科学系の単語が多いのでTOEFL対策に良いと思う。 実際過去にTOEFLで見たalgaeという単語があった。 この本を読む意義は以下の一文に集約されていると思う。 Studies of the fates of past societies may help us understand what could happen to societies living in the same area today. （one might use knowledge of the past to avoid repeating the same mistake) これを個人のレベルだけでなく、公的機関のレベルで理解され政策に反映されるべきでしょう。 意外に思った箇所はルワンダの状況である。90年代に発生した虐殺は単なる民族紛争だけではないそうだ。大きな農場主が大きくなり、 小作人が土地を手放さなければいけないという格差の拡大が寄与しているという。詳細は是非読んで頂きたい。どこかの国の格差拡大と似ていなくもない。 中国の状況についても解説があるが、特に気になる文章がある。 Average blood lead levels in Chinese city-dwellers are nearly double the levels considered elsewhere in the world to be dangerously high and to put at risk the mental development of children. この文章が正しいのであれば中国産の飲み物、食べ物で中国人は健康に生活出来ているのだという開き直りは通用しない。 日本も高度成長期に公害被害者が多かったと思うが、残念ながら教訓は生かされていないようだ。 世界のどこかで起きた事を他山の石とするか、教訓として心に刻み込むか我々が選択することになる。

Muy bueno

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