“Collapsing…”Terry Dashner……………………..Faith Fellowship Church PO Box 1586 Broken Arrow, OK 74013
Capitol Reader Political Book Summaries writes, “In Collapse, Jared Diamond argues that present global resource consumption trends are not sustainable. Throughout history, civilizations have collapsed or declined, in no small measure, because their populations have undermined
ecological niches upon which their existence depends. Diamond believes that a complex set of factors, such as environmental resilience (or fragility), social flexibility, larger global trends and even pure luck, combine in unpredictable ways to influence whether societies fail or succeed.”
I have a point of contention with stated summary. But first, let me tell you something about Jared Diamond. Diamond is brilliant and tends to see greater picture of things by studying significance of small things. His book, Guns, Germs, and Steel was a very rich read. It’s amazing how unseen germs, industrialized steel, and other small things shaped world history.
Diamond teaches geography at University of California and is Pulitzer Prize winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel. (It seems that others thought book was good also.) He is one of most distinguished experts in field of evolutionary biology. He has written more than 200 articles for magazines such as Discover, Nature and Geo, and his work has proven highly influential in informing public discourse on a range of environmental and social issues. He is a smart, very smart guy.
Now back to my point of contention. Let me start by stating a disclaimer. I’m far from qualified to match wits or backgrounds with Diamond. I resist temptation to flatter myself in thinking that I could add or take away anything Professor Diamond states in his well written book. Nevertheless, I would be remiss to neglect in telling you something that Diamond and other highly educated men and women oftentimes overlook when it comes to telling a story on how things came to be. I refuse to believe that “pure luck” is equal to science and technology in either augmenting or whithering civilizations. I refuse to accept this.
