Collapse

I am currently reading the book, Collapse. It talks of how societies choose to fail or to succeed and highlights past societies that have failed, such as Easter Island, the Anaszi and the Mayans. It also talks of past societies that have survived and current societies in peril. The author highlights the five factors that are involved with any societal collapse. Four of the five factors that may or may not prove significant to societal collapse are:

• Environmental Damage
• Climate Change
• Hostile Neighbors
• Friendly Trade Partners

But the one that ALWAYS proves significant is:

• The society's responses to its environmental problems.

Here are some quotes from the book that really are significant and open your eyes to our current situation:

• "When the Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase. Those are the reasons why people see the collapse of Easter Island society as a metaphor, a worst-case scenario, for what may lie ahead of us in our own future."
• Talking of the Anasazi Society: "Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environment, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable "in the short run", but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that societies without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated."