Collapse

I finished reading Jared Diamond’s new book Collapse a few days ago and I can tell you it wasn’t an easy read! His style isn’t bad but the amount of detail he provides can (many times) be overwhelming. The book looks at the historical causes of the collapse of whole societies, from Easter Island and the early Norwegian settlements in Greenland to the Maya and Rwanda. The causes are many of course, but many take form in environmental collapse that eventually feeds into famine, wars, etc. Diamond also looks at contemporary societies that could face similar fates if they don’t address their environmental problems. To me, the most striking lesson and the one most relevant to me (especially as a Saudi) is about society’s values. Diamond gives many examples about how a society’s strongly-held values and beliefs helped destroy it. It appears that in many instances, certain beliefs and values help maintain and rescue a society during rough times. As a result, the society holds on to those values and beliefs and passes them down the generations thinking that they would continue to help the society. Eventually, society forgets why it holds its values and beliefs so strongly and, when times change and conditions change, they continue to cling on to those value and never adapt to the changing times and conditions. Eventually, the same values and beliefs that helped rescue and maintain a society becomes the reason why it collapses. The lesson we must learn, therefore, is to never forget why we hold our values and beliefs, to continue to examine them and see whether they are helping to maintain or ruin society and change those values and beliefs when the times and conditions change. We must remember that values and beliefs are there to help us; they have no intrinsic value in and of themselves. That is the lesson of past societies.