Are we doomed?

Most of what we read we already know. Very rarely does a book come along that changes our whole way of thinking -- not just the facts, but how the facts fit into the larger scheme of things, and what that scheme actually is. Such books do not make for easy reading. Working against the grain of accepted truth, they require a lot of grappling, but once finished the reader emerges permanently altered.

Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" was such a book. In it, Diamond asked why European and Asian civilizations tended to prevail over others -- why, for instance, Francisco Pizarro, with 168 men, triumphed over 80,000 Incan warriors in 1532. Because (we are accustomed to thinking) Pizarro was an exceedingly greedy, ruthless opportunist who took advantage of the Incas' naiveté. Which is certainly true. But it is also true that he was not the world's only greedy, ruthless opportunist. More important, Diamond suggested, were the guns, germs and steel -- as well as a host of other advantages -- that Pizarro brought with him from Europe.

This suggestion is unsettling enough, as it seems to, at least in part, exculpate Pizarro from the genocide he wrought. But Diamond didn't stop there. Why, he goes on to ask, did Pizarro have these advantages, and not the other way around? The answer, we eventually learn, has less to do with military strategy or superior weapons than with things like climate and soil quality -- factors primarily notable for having nothing whatsoever to do with human agency. Diamond presented a causal explanation of human history that has virtually nothing to do with humans. And it was convincing. What's perhaps even more amazing is that the book sold more than a million copies in hardcover, eventually taking the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Here the explanation is simpler: Diamond writes well, and engagingly.

Diamond's new book, "Collapse," looks at civilizations both ancient and modern in search of the reasons why some succeed and others fail. The answers, not surprisingly, turn out to be largely environmental. The more gripping question is why many civilizations were unable to avert destruction. In examining one civilization after another, Diamond provides a host of answers, ranging from the imperceptibility of certain problems, such as the level of salt in a particular soil, to the inability of a society to change a dangerous but learned behavior, to plain selfishness. There comes a definite point, after many chapters under the tutelage of Diamond's clinical perspective, when the reader begins to perceive the mortal outline of our own civilization. It's an alarming thought, to say the least. But, in a marked departure from his last book, Diamond leaves more room here for human agency. These dread outcomes are avoidable -- if, he suggests, we can find the strength to see past our cultural biases, our class prejudices, our distrust of big business, our loathing of one political party or the other, our fear of terrorism and so on. Only, in short, if we can see how peripheral we are to the future of our own civilization can we have any hope of saving that civilization.

[Read on. From Salon.com]