Diamond cites multiple factors Essay Example for Free

Diamond cites multiple factors EssayA tale of ii very similar put forwards, 500 years apart in period, in Montana and in Greenland respectively, sets the pic for Jared Diamonds romp round the known world with an ecological bee in his bonnet. One farm prospered, and the other collapsed. Here ends the first reading, and sure enough, a nonher few dozen parables of tender-hearted folly come out immediately after. The book reads standardized a sequel to Diamonds Pulitzer Prize winning gentle of 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel The Fates of Human Societies even though the focus this time is more firmly on the societies that failed. The said(prenominal) cherry-picking formula is used, and the same breezy tone makes Collapse a fairly easy read, despite its operose theme and expansive range. The books central thesis is that it is geography, more than history, that ultimately causes the demise of individualistic human communities and societies. This is perhaps not surprising from a pr ofessor of geology and physiology at the University of California in Los Angeles. The set wastes of Greenland and the striking stone heads of Easter Island are presented as grim reminders of past civilisations.Diamond cites multiple factors much(prenominal) as environmental change, climate change, hostile neighbours, loss of trading partners and a poor response to emerge environmental problems as the causes of even up and ultimately the collapse of these societies. He is at his best when he dialog about smaller, more isolated and pre-industrial groups, putting us all in mind of an earlier time when people generally lived in villages rather than cities.The book interruptions, however, and applies the same kind of analysis to large city-based civilizations like the ancient Maya of South America and more mixed young economies such as China and Australia. In these cases, as they say, the plot thickens and when Diamond gets his crystal ball out, he predicts that China, the lurchin g giant will have to sustain its typical top-down draconian pressures to environmental issues in the same way that it enforced a rigid curb on the birth rate.Diamonds innocuous description of Chinas feral one child ruling as family planning policies bold and effectively carried out underplays the culture shift that would need to occur if ever a western democracy were to try a similar tactics in aid of environmental reforms. One cant help thinking that Diamond has not just got his head round the concept of globalization and the astonishing capacity that modern democracies have for expert solutions to the old crises of supply and demand of raw resources.His rather glib conclusion Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation for the first time we face the risk of a global decline simply expands the primitive pattern to a bigger scale. This book is a wake up call. nearly of its claims are exaggerated, as when the situation of modern Australia i s compared to an exponentially accelerating horse race which for Diamond means accelerating in the manner of a nuclear chain reaction. The metaphors may be hopelessly mixed, but the point he is making is clear and critically important.After a leisurely wander through most of human civilisation as we know it, Diamond draws sobering conclusions about the cost of mistakes that we should, theoretically at least, be able to predict and deal with before they become fatal and final errors. While we may not be able to agree with all of his conclusions, we certainly are in debt to Jared Diamond for providing us with, yet again, a gripping sequence of well-drawn episodes and plenty of food for thought.