How We Understand The Decline?

“America’s ‘Oh Sh*t!’ Moment”, written by Niall Ferguson, a historian who teaches at Harvard University, in 2011, explores why civilizations collapse, and how America can avoid this. He does not focus only on America, but many civilizations in the past that have collapsed. Niall Ferguson is the author of Civilization: The West and The Rest. The article is creatively and cleverly written using the metaphor of modern technology to describe the way in which the societal collapse occurs. This shows that the article was written for adults who are highly educated and understand and relate to technology. The article discusses the possibilities of what complete collapse would look like in American society. I believe the author successfully

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question, “What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?”

In this essay it will explore and discuss in particular, the key initial drivers, major changes in its structure over its life, the reasons caused its demise, the social impact of its demised including internally and externally, and the lessons learned for all factors mentioned above.

In “The end s of the world as we know them” article Jared Diamond looks at the collapse of several historical societies and the factors that caused their collapse. The factors are:

The theory of degeneration sparked public discourse and fear of falling civilization. Julia Reid says the fin de siècle was

The book, Collapse, by Jared Diamond, is composed of many different societies and places that were know to be great and to this day remembered in our history, but soon subsided with nothing left but a few walls. The chapters each expel absorbent information about a specific, now collapsed, society or place. Diamond successfully starts each chapter by introducing the subject, then continuing by providing detailed background information on how it has collapsed. He also is very personal within the essay by adding his own experiences and thoughts of the subject. Jared Diamond writes of how the collapse of societies is executed, it is said to be when the people demolish the environment, economy, and the population.

The word “collapse” has a number of connotations associated with it. Some view it exclusively the degradation of societies of the highest order. Others see it as the complete disintegration of economic prospects and commerce. Some even think of it political ruin with the demise of states and ruling factions that maintain order. The most general definition for collapse can includes elements from these three viewpoints. American anthropologist and historian Joseph A. Tainter is best known for his writings on societal collapses. In 1988 he published his most widely recognized work, The Collapse of Complex Societies.

In the prologue of “Collapse”, Jared Diamond claims that his previous book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” focused on the buildup of societies over the last 13,000 years and his present book ‘Collapse” focuses on the factors that cause failure and survival in civilizations all across the world2.” Diamond analyzes the breakdown of all societies through a unique scale called the five-point framework. This framework considers environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and most importantly society’s response to its environmental problems. Every society he studies he applies this framework to determine a possible flaw in the collapse of the society. The novel starts with Montana’s current environmental problems and evaluates societies as ancient as the Mayans and as recent as Modern China.

De Blij further deliberates the issue of exclusion, but from an alternative viewpoint. De Blij focuses the idea that exclusion is human nature, therefore implying that human nature contributes to the ultra-exclusive nature of “core” nations to some standard. The elite separation of the core and “periphery” will continue to shape multinational relations, as well as domestic cultural and social norms. Though the core aims to be impermeable, many core nations are very diverse on the interior. In fact, racial and cultural diversity, to a degree, actually contributes to the superiority of “global” regions. As stated previously, most core nations have persnickety tendencies, and this is with reason. Throughout Chapter One, de Blij discusses very

By eighth century B.C, Ancient Rome grew from a small town on the Tiber River into a world empire. When Rome was at its peak, it had overtaken most of continental Europe, Britain, many parts of western Asia, northern Africa, and the Mediterranean islands (Ancient Rome. (n.d.). Among the many things the Romans left behind from their dominance are the worldwide use of romance languages (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese) that came from Latin. The current western alphabet and the coming of Christianity as a major worldwide religion are other things that Rome left behind (Ancient Rome. (n.d.). After 450 years Rome became an empire in the wake of Julius Caesar’s rise and fall. The long and victorious reign of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, began a golden age of peace and prosperity; in contrast, the empire’s decline and fall by fifth century A.D was one of the most dramatic implosions in the history of human civilization. Legend has it that Romulus and Remus found Rome, the twin sons of mars (Ancient Rome. (n.d.). Rome’s era as a monarchy ended by 509 B.C. with the overthrow of the seventh king, King Lucius Tarquinus Superbus, whom ancient historians depicted as a brutal and tyrannical, compared to his benevolent predecessors. Eventually Rome did turn from a monarchy into a republic (Ancient Rome. (n.d.).

The Medieval Ages that descended upon the Europeans following the deconstruction and devolution of the formerly grand institutions of the Roman Empire left a world darkened to the eyes of history. The world lost touch with simple concepts to a modern history student of writing, economy, culture, and government—the mainstay of that which we cannot see ourselves without—civilization. What was left of Europe was a state of chaos. In all other periods of human history I have studied there were similarities among them from which I could draw conclusions upon the condition of the respective times. The Text helped to give order to the progression of European history from the ancient to the modern drawing

Education is very essential in life no matter what age you are. Every day is a new learning experience, and the possibilities are endless. We are all different people with different mindsets and life experiences. But, we do not need traditional schooling to further our experiences in education. We all can learn various things that schooling will not be able to teach.

Frank W. Elwell (2006) offered readers a compelling introduction to Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory. His overview of the theory challenged readers to take on a much broader perspective when analyzing sociocultural systems, as opposed to other narrow, micro views that are emphasized by many undergraduate texts and contemporary social scientists. In contrast from other perspectives that emphasize the analysis of individual societies, Wallerstein seemed to offer a novel, fresh approach by considering the complex interactions between nation-states or societies on a worldwide scale (p. 73). According to Elwell, Wallerstein’s contributions to macrosociology have been made with the intention of promoting radical change to the ways in which social sciences operate as a whole. Wallerstein argued that states, groups, and organizations endure within a vast and complex legal, political, and economic framework (p. 73). Wallerstein referred to these wide-ranging frameworks as world-systems. In many class discussions, the importance of understanding the relationship between an individual’s context and the individual has been heavily reiterated. This is because related considerations are vital when attempting to understand and study human behavior from various micro perspectives. Seemingly, Wallerstein’s approach appeared to extend upon the previous concept by asserting that individual societies and nation-states cannot be fully understood without carefully considering how they

Why Nations Fail takes an in depth look into why some countries flourish and become rich powerful nations while other countries are left in or reduced to poverty. Throughout this book review I will discuss major arguments and theories used by the authors and how they directly impact international development, keeping in mind that nations are only as strong as their political and economical systems.