‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’ (1988) – A Book in Five Minutes, no.28
Channel: ramblinactivist
Date: 2023-06-05

Ramblinactivist’s Videos, 2023/17, Strawberry Moon 2023.

Some books get a ‘reputation’ as a result of what people believe they say rather than on a detailed reading of the text. Just a word in the title – for example, ‘collapse’ – can be enough for commentators to invalidate their content without any appreciation of what they actually say.

To say that the book is about ‘collapse’, I believe, is wrong.

The focus of the evidence, gleaned from archaeological excavations, is not that ‘societies collapse’; clearly, all eventually will. The message is far more nuanced, relating not simply to resources, or war, but the role that ‘complexity’ has in both driving society’s growth and its ultimate collapse.

Transcending this requires not ‘more technology’, or ‘better science’, but a different model for how we provide for our needs; at the heart of which must be process of decreasing systemic complexity in order to increase our resilience to systemic shocks.

For the referenced text and an audio podcast of this post, goto:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/028/index.shtml

The above page has a link to a FREE COPY of the book.

You can find more of these reviews in ‘A Book in Five Minutes’ here:
http://www.fraw.org.uk/blog/reviews/index.shtml

Finally, it would really help to promote this work if you could follow, subscribe, or like my social media presence – which can be accessed from the link above. In today’s digital analytics popularity contest, all that button-pressing means something in this messed-up world; and if we’re going to challenge that, then we have to do our bit to whack the algorithms, supporting the kind of content we want to see by clicking on it.

Chapters:
00:00 Opening titles;
00:29 Book review;
06:47 After-thoughts;
15:44 Closing credits.

#economics  #archaeology #anthropology #collapse #complexity #development