Well, OK, but that still says nothing of “genetic superiority” (whatever that is, as Jared would likely ask), and we Westerners are clearly descended from people who were in a similar situation requiring that New Guinean intelligence before our comfortable lifestyle largely eliminated the “be really clever in the jungle or die” knife-edge. I certainly did not take from the book any of the things some here are crticising him for, but in any case he might just as well have been indulging in a little Devil’s advocacy just to keep your attention.
In my opinion, the reason that Diamond is so irritating in places is the same reason he is so popular - he is saying what a lot of people want to hear.
The romantic view of the “primitive” has been around in the West ever since Rousseau; geographical determinism is a good antidote to Western triumphalism; doomsday books are always popular.
The problem is that, while Diamond has some good ideas, his instinct is always to simplify, to go for the path that supports his prejudices (and I think those of his readers). His heart overrules his head. He always goes too far, pushes his theories well in advance of the evidence.
So, while there is nothing wrong with finding New Guineans wonderful people, Western triumphalism obnoxious or the beauty of Montana seductive, these things should not get in the way of his science - but they do.
Ok, this is his personal opinion and presented as such, so that’s ok I suppose. We all know it’s permissible to think some people more intelligent than others, as long as it’s not Europeans that are on top.
This is such an incredible stupid assertion that one is forced to wonder if that man has any idea at all of European history.
Nice how he manages to insert this little barb about racist theories being nearly universally accepted, of course he also later asserts that most Europeans are racist, but I suppose he, in a prologue, can be excused for his opinions, his observation of New Guineans and the environmental arguments for our stupidity (even if they’re hopeless simplistic and not really fitting for a book that purports to be scientific), but as I said, it is uncanny how these genetic theories of his so resemble those Nazi ones on Aryan supremacy and of how the harsh Nordic climate has created a race of super humans. For the fact is that a racist assumption turned on its head is merely another racist assumption. Jared Diamond is clearly a racist. That’s ok, if he just had had the courage to stand by his racist assumptions. But he hasn’t. In fact he pretty much invalidates his book, by a prior declaring all racist theories such as his own “loathsome”.
I hadn’t really thought about Diamond much after reading GGS. But after reading this thread I heard him this morning on NPR. Did anyone else hear this?
He brought up the issue of northern Europeans in Greenland (or someone did). He discussed the comparative survival abilities of the Inuit and Europeans and claimed (close quote…not exact) ‘The Inuit were better adapted to survive because they were more skilled hunters. But since the norse were european Christians they dismissed the inuit skills as not being worth learning.’ When the interviewer called him on the ‘European Christians’ thing he backpedalled pretty quickly but I think that’s pretty damning.
I don’t think it is very damning. It may indicate that he has a slight prejudice against Europeans, but unless you want to make a case for European Christians adopting the skills and techniques of the locals… shrugs
No, he did not “backpedal very quickly.” He said that the Norse believed their lifestyle to be superior and, for cultural reasons, refused to adapt to the environment.
I haven’t read Diamond’s new book but I did read his ad for it - er, New York Times Op-ed piece - a week or so back, which summarized his argument.
And I had problems with it. The biggest problem I had was his over-generous use of extrapolation. His primary thesis is that the US and the West were heading for a fall due to environmental change. He used as a basis of his thesis the fates of the Greenland colonies, Easter Island, the Mayan culture and one other I forget at this moment.
Well, duh.
Mayans - 60,000 mi sq., centered on the Yucutan peninsula, one climatic zone.
Easter Island - 171 mi sq., a dinky island, one climatic zone.
Norse Greenland colonies - no idea, but bloody small, one climatic zone.
United States - 2,500,000 mi sq., sub-arctic to sub-tropical, myriad varying climatic zones.
A long-term drought affecting a 100,000 mi sq. area can certainly cause the collapse of a culture that is completely or mostly within the boundaries of the drought area, as is believed to have occurred to the Mayans.
A long-term drought affecting a 100,000 mi sq. area within the United States? Hell, we’ve had more than one of those, and it didn’t cause the collapse of the American culture.
Diamond may have a solid point, and I will be reading his book. But, on the face of it, he is doing himself a disservice by pointing to these (relatively) dinky cultures as canaries in the coal mine. If Diamond had been able to point to but one major, widespread culture being done in by environmental catastrophe, then he would have a much stronger argument (and, for all I know, he does have such examples in the book, but for some reason decided not to address them in his promotional efforts). And there are certainly enough examples of major cultures that have collapsed. The fact that he hasn’t asserted that the Roman empire, or the Babylonians, or the Mongols were done in by climate change is, IMO, a big problem with his thesis.
Sua
When you’re predicting the future, though, what options do you have? 
I haven’t read the book or the op ed piece you mention, but didn’t Diamond discuss in Guns, Germs and Steel decreasing agricultural production in the Fertile Crescent owing to increased salinity of the soil (caused by centuries of irrigation)? And didn’t he suggest that the Fertile Crescent is no longer a power base because of this agricultural collapse? (Going from memory here, and my memory may be fuzzy.)
Yes, but the Fertile Crescent is another example of a limited geographical area. The Babylonians were probably a poor choice of an example for Sua to use. It is likely the equally geographically restricted civilization of the Sumerians fell in just this way.
In point of fact, we can also use this example as part of the disruption of a large state. One of the causes for the decay of the Abbasid Caliphate was probably exactly this process ( which apparently has been cyclic over the millenia ), which caused a financial crisis as land revenues from the Iraqi economic engine that was central to the state sunk by the mid-Abbasid period to ~1/3 what they had been under the Umayyads.
However this was only one factor among several and I’m not sure I’d be willing to get deterministic about it.
- Tamerlane
Maybe it can’t happen here, but we are using irrigation over most of our farmland in the US, and areas of the country where crops might be grown without irrigation are increasingly losing their topsoil to residential development. (I’m thinking of Southern and Northeastern farmland here.) So if our heavily irrigated farmlands in the Midwest and the West start developing salinity problems decades or centuries hence, we may not have a good backup plan at the ready.
(In my previous post, I’m using “Northeastern” broadly, to include Mid-Atlantic states, plus Pennsylvania and Ohio. Farmland there and in the South is being steadily lost to development.)
Nobody would, I think, discount the possibility of environmental disasters. Certainly, the use of water resources, loss of topsoil, etc. may be the recepy for serious trouble in the future.
The question is whether such trouble will bring down our civilization into collapse, like that of the Easter Islanders or the Maya - such that, in some future time, explorers from elsewhere come across the remains of US cities overgrown with forest, and maybe some scattered tribes of Americans living here and there in the ruins.
The problem with this scenario is that it is hard to see, connected as the world is, that any disaster in one place could not be mitigated by help from another - at least, among the already rich countries.
In Mr. Diamond’s book, he is well aware of the importance of inter-connectedness (it is one of his factors). However, he eventually expresses the opinion that this inter-connectedness can be a danger, because if there is a collapse, it will take out everyone.
I’m not so sure, and certainly his examples do not prove it (how could they?). It seems to me that some places are already undergoing a Malthusian/environmental crisis right now (Diamond makes the case that this is happening in Rwanda), to general indifference and lack of impact in the West; whereas others may be hit by a natural disaster (like the recent Tsunami), and gain instant support and relief.
In my opinion, the world is dividing up into places that “matter” to other wealthy countries, and places that do not – and the environmental/Malthusian events that happen in the latter are unlikely to have much real impact on the former – which are all inter-connected and unlikely to allow any part to collapse.
The Viking Greenlanders also seem a really uncertain example to me. Theirs was always a very marginal collection of settlement, never of any great number of extend. Nearly cut off from any contact with the rest of civilisation. I think this was served by one trade ship sailing from Bergen once a year.
It is assumed that climate shift to a colder era (the small ice age) is one of the elements that drove them extinct or away, but nobody really knows. It could just as well have been The Black Death. Or perhaps escalating strife with the Eskimos. Political changes in Scandinavia between Denmark and Norway at the time, broke off regular contact with Greenland. Might have been that. Might have been any number of things. Might be they just though life was too damn miserable and cold and went to Iceland. Some of them apparently decided to live with the Eskimos, according to DNA surveys. Most likely there were also Viking settlements in North America which went extinct. Those had nothing to do with climate change.
But ultimately, the entire planet is an island, no? (Probably why Diamond likes the Easter Island example so much.)
When I think of civilization collapsing, I’m not thinking of just US civilization, but the whole global civilization. If we are reckless with our resources as a global society, mightn’t that be the risk?
Maybe technology will save us. Or maybe not. It’s a gamble. Shouldn’t we hedge our bets?
That’s just the issue. The whole world is not “just like Easter Island”. Easter Island is a single, tiny island. The world is a great big planet. There are lots of similarities and lots of differences. The question is, which are more important - similarities or differences?
Any analogy hinges on that.
I’m not one to discount the danger of a global collapse. It certainly could happen. But if you wish to change present policy in order to avert future disaster, you have to demonstrate which things are going to make it more likely, and which are not.
For example, in your previous post you mention, specifically, loss of topsoil and residential development as problems.
Presumably, the answer you would like to see is a halt to practices that erode topsoil, and a halt to residential development.
I point out that these may be purely local problems, ones that can be mitigated by inter-connectedness (I never mentioned “being saved by technology”, so you must be reading that in somehow). For example, if all of the farmland in part of the US gets covered by city, this is only a problem if you can’t buy farm products from elsewhere.
Now, the policies you would presumably champion (I’m making that assumption for the sake of argument) have costs. A halt on residential development means that the price of housing increases, which means that more and more people will not be able to afford it - which could be a big problem.
So, we have to know if this policy is actually worth the cost. And that means being specific about the dangers. Platatudes like “the world is an island” are not going to convince people to overcome the “tragedy of the commons” problems of natural resources!
And that is my problem in a nutshell with Mr. Diamond’s book. As I said, I think his heart is in the right place. I too worry about environmental degredation and the possibilities of global collapse. But if we want to convince people to do something effective about it, we must aknowledge that this has heavy costs - perhaps people left homeless and hungry - and so requires a serious level of proof, and not just nice-sounding phrases.
The “saved by technology” bit in my previous post goes back to the OP.
Perhaps. But I think it may be as dangerous to rely on interconnectedness to save us as it is to rely upon as-yet-undeveloped technology. The US is the breadbasket of the world. Is there another “breadbasket” at the ready to replace us if we deplete our topsoil? Or is it possible to reach a point at which the world cannot produce enough food to fill everyone’s belly? I don’t know the answer to that question.
(This is the sense in which I mean that the entire world is an island. It is a closed system of finite resources. Granted, a much larger system than Easter Island, but that just means that it has larger limits, not that there are no limits.)
I didn’t propose a specific solution, because I don’t have one. But there is value in pointing out the problem, so that people recognize it as a problem, and maybe start to think about possible solutions.
America the bread basket of the world? Never heard that before. Anyway there are plenty agricultural vastly underdeveloped areas. Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Brazil, Argentine, Zambia, Zimbabwe springs to mind.
Yes, and an Easter Islander cutting down a tree no doubt assured himself that there were plenty more where that came from.
“Brazil, long a leading exporter of sugar, citrus and coffee, is emerging as the world’s leading low-cost producer of major farm commodities once hardly associated with the tropics. Now, it is threatening the United States’ standing as the world’s farming superpower, a development that could have profound consequences for rural America.”