[king_nothing]

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is a mind-expanding read. Furthermore, it should be noted that many civilizations have problems roughly around the 250 year / 10 generation time, and the US is quite close to that. Combined with climate change and peak population, things gradually getting more than unpleasant might be the understatement of the millennium. I seriously doubt many civilizations went under quickly, and that most were “frogs” boiled slowly. The time for a dramatic, practical course-correction is now... not tomorrow, not soon and not later.

[chx]

Guns, Germs and Steel is... not a particularly scientific work. Read some of the refutations linked https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views... here. For example:

> in a world where conquistadors bested Aztecs with with guns and Spanish friars set up missions in communities devastated by plague, Diamond’s arguments would matter. But this is a world Tlaxcalans bested Aztecs, and Spanish friars set up many failed missions before gaining a foothold and witnessing entirely disrupted populations fall to disease afterwards.

> Mass resettlement into compact and unsanitary reduccion towns, disruption and destruction of traditional foodways, abusive forced labor in mines and hacienda plantations, and other factors all enabled diseases to assault an already weakened populace. [Germ] Resistance had little to do with.

> On a similar note, the most deadly diseases did not originate from domesticated mammals

This last one is repeated in another post:

> when I dived into the genetic and historic data, only two pathogens (maybe influenza and most likely measles) on his hand-picked All Star team could possibly have jumped to humans through domestication. The majority were already a part of the human disease load before the origin of agriculture, domestication, and sedentary population centers. Diamond ignored the evidence that didn't support his theory to explain conquest via disease spread to immunologically naive Native Americas.

[mustacheemperor]

Thank you. Having temporarily fallen for Diamond's all too "logical" fantasy reasoning in the past, I always recoil a bit seeing it cited in intellectual discussion.

[Arnt]

Maybe you're thinking of "Collapse", which covers Easter Island?

I found Collapse fascinating. At first it was very persuasive, then I got to the chapter about Greenland, which posits that Norwegians at the time would rather starve than eat fish. At that point the book became fascinating for a different reason: The rhetoric and narrative are good enough to make it seem reasonable that people living on a coast rich in fish would develop advanced boats and boating technique, yet absolutely would not eat fish.

It's all done with smooth prose: The book is smoothly easy to read and your attention is kept where you won't wonder why those boats were developed in the first place.

[chx]

See above. Diamond's books are fascinating alright but there is no science behind them. They are not true, plain and simple.

[icebraining]

How does he define "civilization"? Arguably the US is just part of a much older civilization, coming at least since the end of the Western Roman Empire. Resetting the clock just because some English guys decided to split off from the other English people seems a bit silly.

[jacobush]

Right - it has a certain United Judean Front ring to it. :-)

(Life of Brian.)

[Stratoscope]

Your comment frankly terrifies me. (But I upvoted it nonetheless for being so thought-provoking!)

How does an entire civilization achieve a dramatic course correction without one group of people forcing others to do their will?

Even if it may seem undeniably necessary, who decides what the course correction should be and how it will be implemented?

Or can a course correction be made without somebody deciding for others?

I mean these as honest questions, not just adversarial arguing points. Would very much welcome any insights, thanks!

[salawat]

Generally speaking, the things you've been mentioning have been happening for the last 250 year's. Systems have been put in place that have reinforced certain ways of being as being the ideal or easiest way to do things.

Stuff like class hierarchies, zoning policies, corporatism, segregation... All these little quirks and nudges from the past that may or may not be relevant anymore.

This is why some of the founding fathers did not believe in legislation that was considered binding in perpetuity. With a once and done mindset combined with a psychological reluctance to undo what those before us have done, we lay the foundation through which attitudes hundreds of years old still affect us in our day to day for good or ill without OUR generation having consciously discussed and new a positive decision that a law is worth keeping.

A Government that operates without sunset dates on its laws resembles more a Tyranny of the Dead than a Government of the Living if you will as time goes on.

It doesn't HAVE to happen with violence. However, there has to be some very frank, realistic, high integrity people combing through a lot of detritus for a long time. Making conscious decisions others are willing to back up.

It's not an easy thing. The Framers really never set out for easy in their defense.

[brenfrow]

"Collapse" cover's Easter Island in depth. I'm not sure it's even mentioned in "GGS".