I recently watched an interesting
talk by Jared Diamond, an eminent evolutionary biologist who is professor of physiology at UCLA. You may have heard of him if you've read his fascinating account of world history in "Guns, Germs & Steel". which was made into a documentary for PBS and aired a couple of years ago. This recent talk was named after a book he published last year entitled "Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed" which became a bestseller three weeks after it was first published. Diamond's broad research into diverse societies of world history and his attempt to uncover unifying themes that can explain their annihilation or survival is instructive for our contemporary world. A favorite example of his is the remote outpost of
Easter Island, an island that is some 3600 km west of Chile and and 2000 km east of the nearest polynesian island (Pitcairn) and itself is extremely small, it is only small 160 square kilometres and serves as a didactic study of the evolution of a human society independent of many factors. Most notable are Easter Island's gigantic stone statues,
moai, which dot the coast. Easter Island was first inhabited by humans ca 800 AD, in probably what was one of the last remaining habitable yet unexplored lands on Earth. The island was once a lush forest and had abundant natural resources to to sustain its first inhabitants. Over time, most of the trees were cut down to make canoes for use as fishing vessels and to transport the large statues. It is not known when the last tree was cut down, but it was a turning point for the island's inhabitants for with no trees to use as source of wood for starting fires and building homes and canoes, the islander's survival became seriously jeopardized. This was reazlied when in 1722, the first Europeans arrived on the island and found it devastated by civil wars and inhabited by cannibals, Easter Island had met a tragic fate. Diamond then draws a very telling parallel in another island civilazation that at the time was undergoing a similar transformation, Japan in the Tokugawa period. The Japanese were also consuming large quantities of wood to build homes and sustain their economy when the ruling Imperial class realized that at the current consumption rate, this most precious natural resource would be exhausted and took austere conservatory measures that in essence enabled the Japanese to evade the same fate of the Easter Islanders. Professor Diamond also points out two recurring themes that successful societies seemed to share. The first is the ability to relinquish deeply entrenched beliefs that may threaten its survival and in the example of the US, he focuses on two: consumerism and isolationsim. Americans have long been used to consuming large amounts of natural resources since upon the country's founding, the continent had recently been discovered and its abundant natural wealth was first being uncovered. Nowadays, of course, the situation is much different with the enormous population and the rapid modernization of other countries in the world whose standard of living will soon match ours. The current level of resource consumption, Diamond reiterates, is simply not sustainable in the long run. Isolationism is the phenomenon that seemingly irrelevant events in the world which once occurred in isolation, now can have profound consequences for countries much farther away. Take for instance recent events in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia -- globalization has meant that no country is safeguarded by distance from events in others. A fascinating lecture that should be viewed if you have time.