Jared Diamond's article is a striking revelation about the decline of great civilizations. In his article Diamond seeks to reconcile ecological devastation with the decline of powerful ancient civilizations. " It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonment's were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended" (pg. 20). As a political science student, when I study ancient civilizations I tend to focus on the political structures and augmentation of power when I try to understand why a society failed. It wasn't until I read this quote by Diamond that I thought about the ecological events that can have just as great an impact on societal decline as political events. I
particularly enjoyed the irony in his tern "ecocide". Great societies tend to rely so much on their political power and technological advancements that they forget to realize that the environment in which the live, when managed correctly, provides their population with health and sustenance. While mismanaging the environment may have been beneficial at the time, their societies were ultimately destroyed due to famine, plague and climate change. It really makes you rethink the things that hold a society together. Its not the kings, presidents or governmental bodies, its the ecological web that provides us with out daily needs because at our core we are primal beings whose main goal is to survive.
"Many people fear that the ecocide has come to overshadow nuclear war and emerging diseases as a threat to global civilization." (pg. 22). I think our greatest fear as human beings is the threat of a mass extinction event. We see its theme present in many past and present films and works of fiction. I was shocked to discover that our society today is guilty of the same eight environmental catastrophes that once destroyed great societies. I was even more shocked to learn that to add insult to injury we have added four new environmental atrocities to the list of destruction. To be completely honest, when I read things like Diamonds article it upsets me to the point that a righteous anger grows within me and I find myself on my soapbox more often than not with friends and acquaintances arguing for a dramatic course in action to stave off catastrophe. Its impossible for me to ignore the signs. In my home environment I have seen a dramatic change since I was a child. Lakes that my grandfather once took me to have been over fished by the indigenous Native American tribes. In Minnesota we have become so caught up in political correctness, that we now allow Ojibwa and Lakota Indians to electroshock our lakes and take all of the fish within them. Its a practice that I find great personal and moral issue with. Its time that we as citizens of planet earth wake up and realize that without the earth we have nothing. Haven't we been exposed to enough movies like Wall-E to understand that we need the earth to survive. After all you cant eat a computer, or an Xbox, or a car. As Diamond said, "Perhaps we can still learn from the past, but only if we think carefully about its lessons." (pg. 23). We must look beyond ourselves at the larger picture and understand that while we are individuals we are also a part of a greater human family that transcends racial, social, political, national and economic boundaries.
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