Author Jared Diamond talks history of societal collapses

Pulitzer prize-winner Jared Diamond has an interesting metaphor for the failure and ultimate… Pulitzer prize-winner Jared Diamond has an interesting metaphor for the failure and ultimate collapse of society: gated communities in Los Angeles.

On Monday afternoon, Diamond delivered his absorbing lecture “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” to a packed auditorium in Carnegie Mellon’s University Center. The lecture was part of his acceptance of the 2006 Dickson Prize for outstanding achievement in science. The prize, which is awarded annually by CMU, honors scientists whose work spans interdisciplinary fields.

Diamond, after conducting, sifting and sorting through heaps of research, believes that the role of the elite (policy-makers) is the main indicator of whether a society will fail or succeed. If the elite isolate themselves, they will make decisions for their own short-term benefit – decisions that are detrimental to the society, he explained.

Los Angeles’ gated communities illustrate this concept well. The members of a gated community can, for instance, avoid the problems of poor public schools and poor water quality by sending their kids to private schools and by drinking bottled water.

At the event, Diamond addressed the audience fully, making direct eye contact and walking back and forth across the lacquered-wood stage. At the start of his lecture, Diamond said that the department one studies or teaches in is not always indicative of one’s interests.

He pointed to his own case: He is a professor of geography at UCLA with a doctorate in microbial physiology and a specialist in the bird population of New Guinea.

Diamond said he has been mystified by the collapse of great societies since his adolescence. In his most recent book, “Collapse,” Diamond investigates the collapse of societies over the course of history.

During the lecture, he discussed briefly one of the most intriguing of societal collapses. Circa 800-900 A.D., a group of Polynesians began to settle on Easter Island. Roughly 800 years later, in 1680, the island erupted into civil war and the natives turned to cannibalism – the collapse of their society. How did this happen?

The islanders, to prove their devotion to their gods, would erect huge wooden statues. They would also compete with their neighbors for the biggest statue. The islanders’ trees were their main resource – for heating, for housing, for transporting the statues, for building the statues and for animal and plant habitat. As the islanders deforested Easter Island completely, they inadvertently brought about the collapse of their own society.

For Diamond, the question that intrigues him most is not in the physical and historical research of how societies like Easter Island collapsed, but rather why. He wants to know “why groups of people make disastrous decisions.” His four categories, as listed in his book, are: failure to anticipate a problem, failure to perceive a problem, failure to address a problem and failure to solve a problem successfully.

Diamond’s hope for the numerous books and articles he has written, he said, is that we may be able to “extract lessons from the past to help us in the present.” But Diamond was quick to point out that we must first be aware of the differences between the past and the present in order to learn lessons from them. One of these differences involves the tremendous population increase from past populations. Another is the readily available destructive technology (i.e., nuclear power, huge saws, electric-powered machines) that replaced simple tools.

It took the residents of Easter Island roughly 800 years to completely deforest their home. Diamond said this is in stark contrast to our present situation. “At our current deforestation rate,” he stated, “by 2030, the only remaining tropical forests will be in the Amazon and Congo basins.” And these forests, he added, would not be in the state that they are in now.

He added that environmental protection and economics should not be a balancing act for policy-makers: “It’s easier and cheaper to solve environmental problems now, rather than later.”

Diamond’s lecture was a diligent sum-up of his 525-page book.

Toward the end of the lecture, Diamond said, “It’s not enough to send your children to a good school if in 40 years they are living in a world not worth living in.”

He also joked that if everything were grim and the collapse of global society and the destruction of the environment were inevitable, then he would ask the audience members to join him outside for a mass-suicide.

Of course this is not the case, we know. And thankfully, thankfully, the genius intellect of Diamond (he is, after all, a recipient of the Genius Award from the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship), agrees.