Why Societies Collapse from Jared Diamond

Our preliminary research at Houston Foresight into how domains evolve over the Three Horizons suggests collapse is not the typical route to transformation; rather a gradual iteration of new equilibria appears to be more common. Yet it is almost conventional wisdom that crisis is the key enabler of transformational change. Perhaps it is our understanding of collapse that is misinformed? So I decided to take a look at some of the collapse literature and see what might be learned as we start to dig into paths to After Capitalism.

Diamond, the author of Pulitizer Prize winner Guns, Germs, & Steel (one of my all-time favorites), followed it up with Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Success, which is spot-on for our Collapse series.

He pulls no punches. Collapse is not some sort of romantic mystery, but rather pretty straightforward and often resulting from environmental problems not dissimilar to ones we face today. Gulp! Take a look at this progression on the road to disaster:

1) failure to anticipate a problem before it arrived

2) failing to perceive a problem that has arrived (a boiling frog phenomenon)

3) failure to even attempt to solve a problem after it is perceived (either because the status quo is good for some, or more irrational motives such as values, religion, groupthink or denial).

4) difficulties solving the problem once its identified (it’s too hard, too costly or too late).

Dare I ask where you think we are?

The book goes through several historical case examples. He observes that some perceived “romantic mystery collapses, such as Easter Island and the Anasazi, were really self-inflicted ecological suicides.For a contemporary example, (he was writing in 2005), he cited the example of Montana. He noted that if Montana were an isolated country, it would have been in a state of collapse. It had been one of the wealthiest states in America based on copper mining, forestry and agriculture. Then it became very poor. Mining was gone, leaving behind terrible environmental damage, and logging and farming were also in decline. 70% of the children in Montana were on food aid.  Montana had terrible forest fires, salinisation, erosion, weeds and animal diseases. These kinds of problems were faced by some countries at the time, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the reason Montana didn’t collapse of course is that it was embedded within a rich country.  

So what are the key factors behind collapses?

• Environmental damage, inadvertent damage to the environment through means such as deforestation, soil erosion, salinisation, over-hunting etc.
• Climate change, such as cooling or increased aridity. People can hammer away at their environment and get away with it as long as the climate is benign, warm, wet, and the people are likely to get in trouble when the climate turns against them, getting colder or drier. So climate change and human environmental impact interact, not surprisingly.
• Relations with hostile neighbours. Societies can fail to hold off the hostile neighbours when the society itself gets weakened for environmental or any other reasons, e.g., barbarians and the Roman Empire.
• Relations with friendlies. The friends of a society can run into environmental problems and collapses for environmental reasons, that collapse may then drag down their trade partners.
• People’s cultural response. Why did some peoples perceive and recognise their problems and others not? See the 4 factors on the road to disaster above.  

A final interesting observation is the insulation of the decision-making elite from the consequences of their actions. That is to say, in societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences of their decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to pursue their short-term interests. Think rich people living in gated communities and drinking bottled water.

In sum, Diamond’s work suggests the possibility of Collapse is very real. In a later talk, he observed that historically, collapsed societies could be bailed out by others or move – if the planet collapses …. – Andy Hines