In a world full of books comprising of past societies of greatness and downfall, many are ignorant to realize the possibility that an interconnected, technologically advanced civilization such as the United States, China, England, and Russia can too, be slowly slowly collapsing. In the book Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, the author lays the fundamental groundwork to becoming more aware that even with modern technology and medicine, no society that bites the hand that is feeding it can survive. In the book Diamond lays out what five common factors that brought civilizations down: hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, climate change, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues. Past societies mentioned by Diamond include the Norse settlements in Greenland, the Mayan Empire in the Yucatan mountains, and Easter Island. Diamond draws on the appeal and mystery of ancient societies, saying “The monumental ruins left behind by those past societies hold a romantic fascination for all of us. We marveled at them when as a children we first learn of them through pictures. When we grow up, many of us plan vacations in order to experience them at firsthand as tourists…How could a society that was once so mighty end up collapsing? What were the fates of its individual citizens?– did they move away, and (if so) why, or did they die there in some unpleasant way?”(3) With the books majority being focused on the demise of past societies, the author also applies these factors to real world problems such as genocide, pollution and deforestation, to further advise that todays humanity faces these issues with deadly consequences.
Jared Diamond is a geography professor at UCLA, whom frequently vacations back to Montana, a place used as an example as a state in decline. The opening of the book talks about two dairy farms in Montana being compared by the author. While both are moderately isolated from the nearest market and are susceptible to climate change, Diamond says “Instead, my trips to Huls and Gardar Farms, thousands of miles apart but visited during the same summer, vividly brought home to me the conclusion that even the richest, technologically most advanced societies today face growing environmental and economic problems that should not be underestimated” (2). The author explains the reasoning behind his main factors that lead to the collapse of societies, “This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other “input” variables postulated to influence a society’s stability. The “output” variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.” (18).
The author incorporates the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley to set the romantic and mysterious tone of the remains left behind to tell the tales of the former glories of their builders, “The scales of the ruins testify to the former wealth and power of their builders—the boast “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”” (3)
According to Diamond, societies fall due to one or more of the aforementioned factors. For instance, the presence of hostile neighbors can whither a civilizations resources and degrade their land, ultimately destroying the means to sustain any kind of population. “Relations with neighboring societies may be intermittently or chronically hostile. A society may be able to hold of its enemies as long as it is strong, only to succumb when it becomes weakened for any reason, including environmental damage. The proximate cause of the collapse–will have been the factor that caused the weakening. Hence collapses for ecological or other reasons often masquerade as military defeats” (13) In this chapter, the author applies this challenge to the Roman Empire. “Rome became increasingly best by barbarian invasions, with the conventional date for the Empire’s fall being taken somewhat arbitrarily as A.D. 476 (13). Diamond also administers this challenge to the Khmer Empire, saying, “Essentially the same question has been debated for the fall of the Khmer Empire centered on Angkor Wat in relation to invasions by Thai neighbors..” (14).
But the most applicable factor faced by the historical societies to our present one is environmental issues. The author breaks down environmental issues to specific problems faced by both modern and by humankind present and past alike. The list includes deforestation, soil problems such as erosion and salinization, overhunting, overfishing, invasive species, water management problems, and overpopulation. In chapter 11, Diamond examines the island of Hispaniola, an island divided down the middle into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. From a bird’s eye view, the border between the two Caribbean nations is striking. Mass deforestation has left Haiti “…a paler and browner landscape…” (329). To understand their problems, one must look at their history. Once a united settlement, both have a complicated history of switching hands between the French and Spanish, and eventually getting independence from their colonizers, Haiti in 1804 and Dominican Republic in 1821. The two are rather poor countries with unstable and corrupt governments, food shortages, and exhausted natural resources. Haiti is “already the poorest and one of the most overcrowded countries in the New World” (354).