Collapse Book Summary - Collapse Book explained in key points

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Collapse summary

Name: Collapse
Rating: 4.3 (102 reviews)
Author: Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond

How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

4.3 (102 ratings)

19 mins

Table of Contents

Collapse
summarized in 11 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 11

What’s in it for me? Learn how and why societies collapse.

Each year thousands of tourists trek across Guatemala to visit the ancient city of Tikal. Although the city has been abandoned for centuries, its majestic ruined temples and wide avenues show that the Mayan civilization which built it must have been immensely powerful and well organized. But despite their obvious strengths, the Mayans have long since disappeared. Even though they could build huge monuments and sophisticated urban centers, they couldn't stop the world as they knew it from falling apart.

And the collapse of Mayan civilization is just one example; the history of humanity is littered with thriving civilizations that simply vanished.

These blinks will show you how this process of collapse occurs. The author explains the factors that cause a society to fail: self-inflicted environmental damage; climate change; problems with trading partners; damage from enemies; and the inflexibility of a society's institutions when change is needed. A society afflicted by one or a combination of these factors will find itself under pressure to survive.

In the following blinks you will see how past societies have been seriously affected by these recurring challenges. And you will also see how even today our societies are at risk of decline and collapse.

In these blinks you will learn:

why it's better to eat fish than beef in Greenland,
why one society benefitted from slaughtering all their pigs, and
what the connections are between modern Montana life and ancient Mayan civilization.

Societies can collapse if they overconsume their natural resources.

Long-vanished societies have left their traces across the globe, from the pyramids of Egypt to the Incan temples of South America. One of the most famous examples of these ancient legacies are the Moai stone statues on Easter Island.

There are over 800 Moai, and some are up to ten meters tall. When European explorers first reached the island in 1722 they were awestruck by the Moai's size and number. Yet they couldn’t work out how they got there. They could only find 2,000 half-starved indigenous people who could never have achieved such feats.

What the Europeans couldn’t have known was that centuries earlier, Easter Island played host to a vibrant and prosperous society. A rich subtropical forest had covered the island, supporting a wide variety of birds and animals. Along with fish in the surrounding seas, the rich flora and fauna provided enough to feed a population of 30,000. It was this community that erected the Moai as monuments to their gods.

So what had happened to them?

The Moai builders' world declined because its people committed ecocide; they overused and exhausted their vital resources. First, the island’s jungles were systematically cut down to help with the construction and transportation of the Moai from quarries to places of worship. The process continued until there were no jungles left. By the time the Europeans arrived, there was not a single tree on the island over three meters high.

Unfortunately, as the trees disappeared so did the island's birds and animals. The loss of the jungles also affected the islanders' ability to fish, because as the number of trees dwindled there was no timber left to make fishing boats. Finally, without nutrients from the trees, the islanders' crops started to fail.

Deprived of its major sources of food, Easter Island’s society soon collapsed into the wretched state the Europeans encountered.

Societies can collapse if they lose their major trading partners.

Have you ever seen one of the film adaptations of Mutiny on the Bounty? They tell the true story of how the crew of an eighteenth-century British ship mutinied against their cruel commander. After capturing the ship they decided to settle on a tiny group of Pacific islands known as the Pitcairns.

Although the islands were deserted when they reached them, they also discovered many stone tools and bones. It seemed that someone had once lived there, but where had they gone?

Bad leadership can exacerbate a society's problems, leading to its decline and collapse.

One of the most popular tourist traps in Central America is the ancient, abandoned Mayan city of Tikal. Its huge structures – some of which are over 70 meters high – show that the Mayans must have been supremely powerful and wealthy.

But despite this wealth and dominance, Mayan civilization collapsed and its cities were left to crumble. Its downfall was self-inflicted.

Societies that refuse to adapt to environmental changes will die out.

What comes to mind when you think of the Vikings? The modern image of them is of strong and burly men thriving in cold, inhospitable climates.

However, in one environment, Greenland, they failed to thrive. Just why did a people who successfully colonized most of Northern Europe fail there?

Societies can avoid collapse if they carefully manage their environment and populations.

In the last few blinks we have learned that societies collapse for various different reasons such as climate change, overpopulation and environmental damage. In this blink we will discover how societies have avoided these dangers and succeeded in the long term.

The tiny, isolated island of Tikopia in the Pacific is a great example. Despite being miles away from their neighbors, Tikopian society has thrived for over 3,000 years. This is because everyone in the population – not just the leaders – takes great care to keep the food supply stable.

Rwanda’s genocide can be partly traced back to environmental mismanagement.

If you mention Rwanda to anyone they will most likely think of the dreadful genocide that happened in 1994, when 800,000 ethnic Tutsi were killed by the country’s other main ethnic group, the Hutus.

Most people agree that the main driver behind the killing was politically motivated ethnic violence. But other factors played a part. You might recognize one of these factors – overpopulation – from the historical collapses we have already discussed.

China’s unprecedented growth could have dangerous consequences for the whole world.

One of the dominant stories of our time is the phenomenal rise of China. Over the last few decades its economy has grown at an unbelievable rate, and it will soon catch up with and even overtake the US economy.

But when a society as large as China – at 1.3 billion people – pursues such a high rate of growth, there are huge knock-on effects.

Although many societies look healthy, they are being allowed to rot from within.

In the last couple of blinks we have seen that two developing countries, China and Rwanda, have experienced the factors that can cause societal collapse. But it's not only societies in the non-developed world that can be affected in this way; Western communities are also at risk.

Take Montana, for instance. Montana lies toward the north-western corner of the United States and is famed for its beautiful landscape. Visitors flock to the state every year to see the crystal clear, trout-filled streams, the wild mountains and the neverending unspoilt forests. However, although the area may look like paradise to these tourists, below the surface its environment is under constant threat.

There are worrying parallels between collapsed societies of the past and our own society today.

Most of us enjoy a standard of living unparalleled in human history. We are healthier and live longer than anyone before us, and we have access to knowledge and technology that would astonish someone living only a century ago.

Yet despite all this progress and sophistication, we are all – no matter where we live – in danger of repeating the mistakes of past societies.

The responsibility for environmental management lies with the public, not with corporations.

If modern society does indeed slide towards collapse, who is to blame? Most of us would quickly respond, “big business.” When we see environmental damage like polluted rivers or leaking oil, most of us lay the responsibility at the feet of large corporations. We think, if only they would behave more ethically, our problems would be solved.

In fact, when companies act in a cavalier manner towards the environment, the fault is not theirs but ours for letting them behave in this way.

We can only overcome the world’s problems by tackling them together.

Apart from a few cranks in the pay of the oil industry, the vast majority of the world’s scientists believe that human activity is causing dangerous changes to the world’s climate. Most governments and supranational bodies agree with them. Yet global carbon emissions continue to rise. Why can’t we act and stop environmental damage?

The trouble with global threats is that no one feels directly responsible for them. We are all responsible for climate change whenever we drive our cars, leave our TV on standby or buy items we don’t need. And because we are all responsible, no one takes ownership of the problem.

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What is Collapse about?

Collapse explains how societies fall. It explains the reasons behind the disintegration of once mighty civilizations like the Mayans in Central America or the Vikings in Greenland. Their stories provide us with harsh lessons on the possible consequences of our own environmental and societal mismanagement.

Best quote from Collapse

People see the collapse of Easter Islands society as a metaphor for what may lie ahead of us in our own future.

—Jared Diamond

Who should read Collapse?

Anyone who cares about the environment
Anybody who stares in wonder at the monuments of ancient civilizations
Anyone who is worried about the future of our society

About the Author

Jared Diamond trained as a physician before becoming a professor of geography at UCLA. He is best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee, The World Until Yesterday and Guns, Germs and Steel, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize.

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