Kate Yoder asks a great question in the Wired the article Why Have Climate Catastrophes Toppled Some Civilizations but Not Others?
Henry Kissinger once said about societal collapse of complex societies, “Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.”
Kate offers insight into potential answers mentioning Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed that describes the Roman Empire the first bubonic plague due to volcanos lowering temperatures and Maya’s in Central America linked to major drought.
This is a well-researched topic which Kate references:
- Analysis of 150 crises over 5,000 years,
- Complexity Science Hub organization that uses mathematical models to understand dynamics of complex systems,
- New research from the Royal Society on resilience in response to climate change, and
- Study in Nature in 2021 analyzing 2,000 years’ worth of Chinese history, and
- America Is Headed Toward Collapse article in The Atlantic by Peter Turchin, excerpted from his book End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration
Every day we wake up to a society a little more complex than the day before. It may be helpful to learn the previous advanced societies that were also very complex.
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