Collapse

Well, it took me the best part of a month and in the end I was quite relieved to get to the end but I have just finished reading an excellent book called “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive” by Jared Diamond (Penguin Books website entry). It presents detailed analysis of the probable reasons why past human societies such as Easter Island, the Greenland Norse and the Mayans collapsed, considers collapsed or collapsing modern societies such as Rwanda and Haiti and then examines what these collapses can tell us about the possible future of present societies. It considers the problems facing societies such as modern-day Australia and China and examines the way that our continuing, non-sustainable use of the Earth’s resources, population growth and globalisation impact on the future prospects for human civilisation. It is a huge book with many interesting and challenging components but also one of those books that becomes something of a blur by the time you have finished it. However, I certainly found that it challenged the way that I think about our future and reminded me that significant changes will occur in my lifetime and will impact dramatically on the world that my children will live in as adults. It is not a book that offers no hope, in fact it is one that helped to re-energise me to continue with the small changes that I am making in my own life that may help in some small way to preserve future human societies.