The End Of The World By Jared Diamond: The Collapse Of Historical Societies

“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

Societal collapse can be vast within the archaeological context but more generally occurs from conflicting elements that contribute to the downfall of a social collapse due to things such as

Imagine a world where there were no problems, and everyone is happy. Few societies have not even been close to being this perfect. Great societies fail due to weak security systems, poverty, and inequality. The failed societies of Ancient Rome, Africa, and the dystopian novel Divergent by Veronica Roth, are all examples of great societies failing because of these three reasons.

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.

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

From 600 BCE to 600 BC, many empires across the globe saw expansive and explosive growth. Many other empires collapsed during this time.What separated those that were on the way up and those on the way down was their ability to control their empires. While there are many examples of collapsing empires being unable to exert control of their territories, the examples center around 3 general reasons. These 3 reasons of collapse are economic, political and environmental.

Civilizations are born, reach their potential under extraordinary leaders, and over time lose their vitality and strength. The remarkable feature in this cycle is that new civilizations emerge out of there fallen leaders, regenerated by new leaders and by outside cultural

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.

During the period of 600 BCE to 600 CE there was much political unrest throughout the world. This essay will analyze the reason for collapse of once powerful ancient empires by scrutinizing the rulers who led them. By looking at the circumstances of a fallen empire, a person can asses that the neglect of government officials, stressed with vast war expenses, who levy high taxes that lead to peasant uprisings, is the circular chain of events that will always eventually crumble a weak empire. And as specific as they may seem, these crises developed many a time.

Every developing and already developed nation goes through its ups and downs within its political, social, and economic atmosphere. An infamous example could be during Hitler’s reign in Germany, another example could be during the early 1900s into the time of the Red Scare where only the élite few lived well off while the rest of the population did not compare as well. During this time in the United States, an idea known as “the system” came about. “The system” is infamously known to affect many lives such as Anne Elizabeth and Ben Compton from Dos Passos’s trilogy, and Randolph Bourne.

In the past, most large societies have reached an inevitable failure. Most often, those failures have resulted due to energy scarcity and an overload of energy consumption as a factor. Another factor is civil wars. The majority of countries around the world have had a civil war since 1980. Conflicts often occur with growing populations as well as low economic growths. There are four theories of civilization failures. The first theorizes that environmental change and lack of resources heavily impact the collapses of society. Many measurements show a correlation between droughts and violence which increases risk of civil war which is largely proven factor of societal failure. The second theory predicts that limits in technology hinder society from growing past a certain point which causes the inevitable failure. Financial imbalance6 is also a key theory in this failure with two sub-theories. The first is social stratification in which the wealthier class exploits the lower class causing the financial imbalance to grow. The second is the overstretch of the empire. This occurs when the society puts such a large amount of their finances into their military in order to maintain it but this ends up causing the collapse instead of avoiding it. Only 14 of 66 countries studied have avoided bankruptcy. Economic booms are also a possible factor for

Society is a structure that besieges every individual. Its daunting presence is inescapable. Throughout the 19th century, the American people were trapped in a rapidly industrializing nation flooded with corruption and greed. A few crucial advancements did result from this tumult, such as the invention of the lightbulb and the integration of women into the working class. However, these advancements, while substantial, did little to make up for the distressing state American society was in. Pollution prowled the streets, and crime levels were colossal. Big businesses would stop at nothing to gain power and profits. Shortly following the close of the 19th century was the Great Depression; a time of immeasurable poverty and suffering. In Eric

Reading “Railey and Reycraft,” I learned that the several features listed by Renefew show that there are cases of collapse in state and prestate societies. Never knew that some cases of contrary to assumption don’t really imply regional abandonment and etc. Collapse is splits into internal and external divisions, I never knew that can put collapse into two divisions; I thought it was just one meaning to it. Also, collapse external factors are environmental disasters can bring out the collapse of a complex society.

Imagine a world with overbearing leaders, poverty, and social judgements? In different societies there are many different reasons that they could fall. Social injustice, corrupt government, and poverty are some of the different reasons that will be written about. In Divergent, Rome and Nazi,Germany there were similar downfalls between all of the societies. There are many ways for different societies to fall; social injustice, corrupt government, and poverty.

What is collapse? How do we define it? We must first find the meaning behind this before we go and start describing how collapse happened. This way, people know what they are reading about and how to interpret it. The archeologist J.A. Tainter (1990) says “A society has collapsed when it displays a rapid, significant loss of an established level of sociopolitical complexity.” Now this may seem like a straightforward statement, but is it really? When he says rapid, what is considered to be a rapid speed? Would this be 5 years,