{"id":48753,"date":"2019-10-02T07:34:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T12:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48753"},"modified":"2019-10-02T07:34:35","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T12:34:35","slug":"the-myth-of-imminent-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48753","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of Imminent Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Myth of Imminent Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The ills that have haunted our species since time immemorial \u2014 starvation, illness, protection from the elements \u2014 are less prevalent than ever<\/a> before. At the same time we\u2019ve probably never been as disillusioned<\/a> about the fruits of progress<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Panicking about an imminent apocalyptic disaster, people march on the streets<\/a> of the most prosperous cities in all of human civilization. They chant about impending extinction<\/a> of humankind or the planet itself, about an unsustainable<\/a> way of life, about an invisible gas<\/a> produced as a by-product <\/a>of our increasingly affluent lifestyles. Sixteen-year-olds are addressing the World Economic Forum<\/a> and the UN<\/a> imploring us to reconsider the irresponsibly disastrous path we\u2019ve entered upon. Elected officials<\/a> are proposing one fanciful<\/a> idea<\/a> after another<\/a> on topics none of them seem to understand<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than one commentator has pointed to a crisis of spirituality<\/a> and how radical environmentalism<\/a> has filled the void left behind by religion. Moral outrages over plastic<\/a> and the Amazon<\/a> are blown entirely out of proportion<\/a>. Virtue signaling and \u201ctaking a stance\u201d are more important than effecting change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that light, looking at actual societal collapses is relevant. When podcasts like Paul Cooper\u2019s Fall of Civilization<\/a> are trending on most platforms and the popular historian Dan Carlin\u2019s forthcoming book The End Is Always Near<\/a> is making huge waves, it is clearly time to dust off the work of esteemed geographer Jared Diamond \u2014 particularly his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive<\/a>, the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/a> (which just came out in a 20th-anniversary edition). This year he released Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis<\/a>, which is a natural continuation<\/a> of the broad-brushed portrait of the fundamental challenges for human societies that he has been painting for 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Myth of Imminent Collapse The ills that have haunted our species since time immemorial \u2014 starvation, illness, protection from the elements \u2014 are less prevalent than ever before. At the same time we\u2019ve probably never been as disillusioned about the fruits of progress.  Panicking about an imminent apocalyptic disaster, people march on the streets of the most prosperous cities in all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[150,21708,24467,27274],"class_list":["post-48753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-collapse","tag-jared-diamond","tag-joakim-book","tag-the-american-institute-for-economic-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48754,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48753\/revisions\/48754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}