“The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumph”
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
A review:
Table of Contents
Power Struggle in Society
We cannot refrain ourselves from the power struggle going around within our society. As long as we are breathing, we have this innate ability to show around our dominance which could come in many different forms. A good orator trying to convince the listener in believing his words, an administrator guiding his own philosophies behind the running of the whole administration, a teacher convincing his own students is an example of a small power struggle in one way or the other way which had worked wonderfully so far.
The power struggle has been there and will be there as long as we thrive in this world. In fact, our whole society hierarchy was simply based upon such power struggle which we seem to despise at times. After reading Mr. Jared Diamond’s “ Collapse”, I would have to admit that neither I nor anyone mortal on this planet can escape this curse of the power struggle. So we don’t have many choices to make. But the flourishing and perishing of a society largely depends on those peoples who have these unique choices to make some life-changing decisions.
Lost Ancient Civilization
Looking through, once in our history, we had some beautiful advanced societies like “ Maya” of South America who in our wildest imagination had never thought that it will perish at some point. We have some good examples of societies like Japan surviving through the tough period of Tokugawa and Tikopia surviving through the hard times of land cultivation etc. Some societies had flourished, some had perished and there are countless reasons for being met with such fates.
Factors affecting the fall of civilization
There are environmental factors, Cannibalism, Adaptability issues, and power struggles. Despite all the factors that contribute to the flourishing and perishing of society, I personally believe that the decision-making of the power holders had cost the fate of the societies and will further influence the fate of the societies in the future too. Maya reached the pinnacle of their greatness in the late fifteenth century before being on the verge of collapse within a period of few decades. All those factors are some contributing factors that may at some point prove pivotal regarding the fate of society.
The Norse of Norway survived and the Norse of Greenland perished. Greenland the name being coined by Eric the great who in an attempt to pursue the Vikings from reaching the Icelandic land, he coined the name Greenland to dupe the peoples, in contrast, Greenland has only one percent of its land in green form. I would rather say that there is no need for Eric the great to go to Greenland. His poor decision-making had ultimately cost the collapse of Norse societies in Greenland where Inuit peoples had thrived and will thrive in the long run too.
The power holders of the Easter island indulged in continuous deforestation of its tress for the allocation and transportation of Moai statues. Their miscalculation of superiority by building tall statues within the tribes had dismantled the whole ecological structure of the Easter island where nobody survived by the beginning of the nineteenth century. They could have stopped building Moai statues at Rapa Nui and would have rather invest their energy in preserving their sensitive ecology.
How many wrong decisions before the final right one?
The countless decisions had so far revealed the destiny of our own societies. Those irresponsible decisions had perished their own societies, the logical decisions had flourished their own societies and will continue to do so as long as the reasonable decisions flow.
For instance, the current pandemic disease “ Covid -19” caused by the spiked ( Corona ) virus is the result of some lackluster efforts in decision making. The zoonotic disease as we say has its own origin within mainland China with the officials well aware of the wildlife markets and how it has been influencing the Chinese market growth. The poor lack of vision from the officials paved way for the outbreak of this pandemic disease which could have eradicated the whole society had it not been the modern technologies at our doorstep.
So this book is definitely one of the top non-fiction books I had ever read in which you will get to explore a lot about the Polynesian island with their beautiful tales. You should grab this book for some adventure in the real sense.
Related Articles