Man is the predator and nature is the prey, say multidisciplinary researchers who have studied what is common to the collapse of many cultures in the past, and if modern culture wants to survive, it must take care of increasing equality and stopping the exploitation of natural resources beyond their ability to renew them
Researchers in a study funded by NASA's Goddard Center and the National Science Foundation, and published in the journal Ecological Economics, estimate that history will repeat itself this time as well, and that the writing is on the wall.
Safa Montchari from the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Jorge Rivas, from the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and Eugena Kalani from the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies at the University of Maryland write in an article titled: "A Minimal Model of the Interaction between Man and Nature" that there is a growing concern about the consumption trends of The population and as a result, that the current use of resources is not sustainable. However, the assessment of the risk of the collapse of human culture and what is the maximum level of exploitation of nature, are disputed.
More of the topic in Hayadan:
- Researchers at University of Tel Aviv: Middle Eastern empire collapsed due to climate crisis
- The lesson we need to learn from the destruction of ancient civilizations due to climate change
- How Persian chauvinism saved Western culture
- Colonialism - the next generation
"However, in history there were common periods in which the level of social complexity, political organization and economic specialization increased. These periods were characterized by the development of complex and powerful technologies that support a growing population that depends on the mobility of increasing amounts of materials, energy and information. Cultural collapses have occurred frequently in the last five thousand years and were followed by hundreds of years of economic, intellectual decline and even population reduction."
"Natural phenomena and social crises have been proposed as causes of specific breakdowns, but the overall explanation remains elusive. Two features were seen in all cases of the collapse of civilizations: ecological burden and the widening of the economic gap."
In this article, the researchers build a new model and symbolize several scenarios that predict the consequences and explain them. The model includes a total of four equations that describe the development of the populations of the elites and the common people, nature, and the accumulated wealth.
The mechanisms that led to the collapse are discussed and measured on the scale of "carrying capacity". The model suggests that the assessment of the bearing capacity is a practical measure for the early detection of collapse. The collapse can be prevented and the populations can reach a stable state with maximum carrying capacity, if the rate of consumption of natural resources is reduced to a sustainable level, and if the resources are distributed equitably.
The dramatic collapse of the Roman Empire, followed by many centuries of decline in the number of people, economic shrinkage, intellectual retreat, and the disappearance of the Orinian women, is well known, but it was not the first case of the cycle of rise and fall in Europe. Prior to the rise of the Greco-Roman Lacassian culture, both the Minoan and Mycenaean cultures each reached advanced levels of civilization in turn and then almost completely collapsed.
The history of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, agriculture, complex society and city life has known a series of ups and downs including those of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Seleucids, Parthians, Sasanians, and the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties.
In neighboring Egypt this cycle appeared again and again. The Hittite culture in Anatolia and the Harappan culture in the Indus Valley collapsed almost completely until their very existence was unknown until modern archeology rediscovered them. Similar cycles appeared again and again in India, the best known of which are the Maori culture and the Gupta culture. Chinese culture resembles that of Egypt full of cycles of rise and fall of the Zhou, Han, Tang and Song, each ending in the collapse of hoplite authority and socio-economic decline.
The collapses were not limited to the "old injustice" the Mayan culture is also known and has been a charm on everyone to this day. It is hard to ignore the virgins of 90-99% of the Mayan population after 800 AD and the virgins of the kings, the long-term calendars and the other complex political and cultural institutions.
At the central level of Mexico, several powerful states rose and fell that reached a high degree of power and prosperity and then collapsed, Teotihuacán (the sixth largest city in the world in the sixth century) and Monte Alban were just the examples of the biggest collapses when their population was reduced by 20-25% from their peak days in several generations.
Despite the common feeling that social breakdowns are rare or even fictional "the emerging picture is that the process repeats itself over and over in history, and is global in its distribution."
As Turchin and Napadov (2009) commented, there is support for the hypothesis that the secular cycle - of demographic, social and political fluctuation over long periods (hundreds of years) is the rule, not the exception in large agrarian states and empires."
This leads to the question of whether modern culture has also suffered a similar fate. It seems logical to Hammy that modern civilization, armed with the greatest technological capability to date, scientific knowledge and energy resources, will be able to survive and thrive where historical societies have failed. But the review of the collapses illustrates not only that this is a common phenomenon but also the intensity with which complex and powerful advanced cultures are vulnerable to collapse. The fall of the Roman Empire and empires with a similar level of progress such as the Maori and Gupta civilizations, as well as advanced Mesopotamian civilizations indicate that advanced, complex, sophisticated and creative civilizations are fragile and ephemeral.
Many causes have been proposed for specific collapses, including volcanoes, earthquakes, droughts, floods, changes in river courses, soil erosion, deforestation, tribal migration, foreign invasions, technological changes (such as the invention of the use of iron), changes in the methods of producing weapons (mounted cavalry on horses, armed infantry or long swords), changes in trade patterns, the depletion of a particular mineral resource (eg silver mines) cultural deterioration and meticulousness, popular uprisings and civil wars. However, these explanations are specific to each case of collapse and not general. Moreover, even in specific cases for which the explanations are correct, the companies in question suffered from these factors before and did not collapse. For example, the Minoan culture repeatedly experienced earthquakes that shook palaces, and they simply rebuilt them more magnificent than before. Indeed, many societies suffered from droughts, floods, volcanoes, soil erosion and deforestation without major social disturbances. The same is true of migrations, invasions and civil wars. The empires of the Romans, the Han, and the Maori were for centuries heterogeneous, managed to defeat their 'barbarian' neighbors, who eventually conquered them, so military power alone cannot explain the collapse. As for natural disasters and external threats, identifying a specific factor causes us to ask "Yes, but why is this specific instance of this threat the cause of collapses?"
Other factors must also be involved, and in fact the political, economic, ecological and technological conditions in which civilizations collapsed are very different from each other. Each collapse had its own set of causes, but the overall explanation remains obscure. The universal nature of the phenomenon must involve a mechanism that is not specific to a certain time period in human history, not to a certain culture, technology or natural disaster.
The model known as the Human And Nature DYnamical model (HANDY) compares the situation to a predator and prey, with the human population acting as a predator and nature as prey. When the prey is extinct, the predator, despite having reached the peak of its ability, dies of starvation. The analogy for this is the Earth's resources.
In conclusion, the equations, simulations and historical research led the researchers to the conclusion that one of two features appeared in the collapse of societies in history, the overexploitation of natural resources, and the increase of social disparities. Whenever the social gap grew, it was difficult to prevent the collapse and major political changes were required and a reduction in inequality and the rate of population growth. Even in the absence of social disparity, the collapse may still happen if the per capita consumption is too great, but the collapse can still be avoided and the populations can reach equilibrium if the per capita consumption of natural resources is reduced to a sustainable level and if the resources are distributed equitably.
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The link to the full study does not work
Excellent article! Thank you!
Please proofread the article to correct the mistakes.
Thanks.
Done. Avi
A lot of things are necessary, but we work voluntarily and I personally spend tens of thousands of shekels per year to maintain the website. Unfortunately, due to the situation in the Ministry of Religion, which takes care of funding every religious lunatic who repents, in the scientific bodies, and they are very rich, and there are quite a few of them, there is no one to budget for one scientific lunatic. I have been warning for twenty years that we are on the way to a Halacha state, every day that passes only strengthens my righteousness. If we were in a normal country, the situation should be the other way around.
There were quite a few typos in the article - linguistic criticism on the website is desirable before the articles are published
In addition to the collapse, you should also read Jared Diamond's wonderful book "Bacterial Guns and Steel" which gives an instructive explanation of the fall of ancient empires and peoples on the brink of disease.
It is also amazing to see how many mistakes that were made in the end may have sealed the destinies of entire areas in the ancient world
Sounds like an article in the post-modernist-neo-Marxist propaganda service
The slippery factor is "trust" - the trust in the leadership, when the leadership shows modesty, humility, honesty and consideration, this is smart leadership and the leaders return in kind, in such a situation the energy needed to maintain the company is minimal. But when this training is impaired, the energy for the maintenance of society rises, and this manifests itself in excessive and illogical bureaucracy, in investments in the trampling of the citizens, in investments in secret services, and in unnecessary wars, etc., etc. And when the energy to maintain the society is too great, the society disintegrates - there are not enough resources. This behavior can also be calculated referring to the second law of thermodynamics - the investment of energy needed to maintain an animal until it dies, is there a way to maintain eternal life?.
The cycle will continue, only this time the collapse will be global, across all continents at the same time, because today everyone is connected by transportation, food crops, and production, and the gaps are growing even between countries.
Rome did not collapse dramatically. Rome split and slowly disintegrated over several centuries. And even when the governmental framework of Rome no longer existed, many governmental elements remained after it, such as the Catholic Church, such as a system of laws. The peak of the empire's greatness is due in no small part to a number of emperors who appointed as their successors extremely talented people including Trianus, Hadrianus, Marcus Aurelius. Its last years were characterized, among other things, by miserable rulers. So the human element of leadership is a factor that has a huge impact on the course and destiny of an empire.
Professor Jared Diamond in his book Collapse presents this thesis based on 20 examples. Therefore the study is not flawed.
He cites hundreds of citations from dozens of studies on the subject. They all show that the exploitation of natural resources destroys culture, and more precisely
It is necessary to learn how not to exhaust them.
The exhaustion of natural resources must be applied to the exhaustion of state resources. For example, if you sell all the flagships in the country to foreign investors, this is exhausting the country's resources. If buses are imported from China instead of being produced in chassis/box, privatizing the electricity sector, the ports, Teva, Tnuva, turning everyone into serfs: nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers - this is resource depletion in reverse. The following sentence sums up my father's good article: eat and drink because tomorrow we die - this is exhausting resources.
I think the full study and this article are fundamentally wrong.
A. Overexploitation of natural resources does not harm the population, but the opposite - it leads to technological progress. If early man had enough berries he would not have turned from a gatherer to a hunter. Overuse of wood/metal/plastic/glass leads us to recycling technologies. Overexploitation of oil leads us to alternative energies. Furthermore - except for the production of atomic energy, humanity does not use any natural resource. The amount of atoms and their type on Earth is not affected by humanity at all. The myth of consuming natural resources is simply the use of chemical processes that currently have no known way to reverse them. And this is exactly what pushes technology forward - the search for reversible and alternative chemical processes. For example: in the 13th century they thought that eventually all the iron in the world would rust and there would be nothing to make swords from. But technology invented a reversible process for rust (separation of oxygen) and today we don't worry about iron deficiency. After all, the amount of iron atoms on the surface of DHA is constant. And the example of the iron illustrates very well that the "consumption of natural resources" is a myth that is fed mainly by economic considerations (of the media and of the politicians). The amount of solar energy available to us is enormous and with such an amount of energy every process that humanity does today is reversible.
B. The real reason behind the collapse of empires is known to every child. It is called "conquest by another nation/empire or destruction by a natural disaster". There is no direct connection to social disparity or natural resources. There is no empire that has fallen by itself - without being destroyed by a foreign enemy. There were kingdoms that disintegrated (like Israel and Judah, BRAM) due to social and economic reasons, but this is not called a fall.
Let's get back to our point, empires fell because they were conquered and victory in war is achieved by "quantity" or "quality".
Regarding "quality" - this is about technological superiority in battle (mainly in weapons and intelligence). There is not much to add here. Whoever has technological superiority wins. It doesn't matter how much the Inca Empire consumed natural resources or its social disparity. Over 50% of the people died from diseases that came from Europe and this is the main reason for the fall (you can call it a biological weapon).
Regarding "quantity" - here there is a social element. When people don't want to fight - eventually the empire will be conquered by a foreign army that really wants to fight (mainly to loot). You can see this happening today in Israel (in terms of evasion rates, the pacifism movement, etc.). But this social element is not a gap between classes but rather the average wealth of the population. A poor person is always ready to fight because he has nothing to lose. A peasant's son in the 11th century will join a crusade because at the moment he has nothing but after a successful war he will have a horse, gold, a wife. Or similarly - if a burglar tries to steal a piece of bread from a poor person - the poor person will fight him to the last drop of blood. On the other hand, a rich person is not willing to fight. Mainly because he has a lot to lose. He prefers to pay another person to fight in his place (military, private security guard, etc.). And when people don't want to fight - this is where you start to see the end of the empire. For example - the Roman Empire. She had a strong army and conquered vast territories. But then the Romans started getting rich from the taxes and didn't want to fight anymore. They paid bribes and ransoms to the barbarians to avoid war. Little by little the appetite of the barbarians increased and when the ransom was insufficient, Rome suddenly discovered that she did not have enough legions.
To summarize: the social element is not the gap but the general wealth. The more successful the empire is, the richer people become, the more pacifist their attitude becomes, and this leads to the conquest and extinction of the empire. You can see this happening in the Land of Israel. In 1948 people were ready to die for any piece of land. In 2013, people are ready to use any kind of politics, agreement or giving up land or position - just to avoid war. This is exactly what happened to the Roman Empire. And if we extrapolate from the Roman fate to modern Israel then - in the near future Israel will enter into economic cooperation agreements with neighboring countries (Palestine territories, etc.) - agreements in which Israel will finance the neighbors. In addition, Israel will sign a variety of social contracts, military restrictions, land restrictions to enable economic cooperation. The next step will of course be the weakness of Israel and the export of capital abroad. Rich people who are not ready to fight will slowly spend their fortunes abroad and even move to live there. After that comes a phase of occupation of Israel's periphery - mainly by non-Zionist elements who have no intention of fighting for the existing regime. Finally comes a stage of social disintegration and possibly military occupation (although in the 21st century military occupation is no longer necessary). This is how history repeats itself.
In conclusion: In my opinion this study and article is not academic but a collection of wrong conclusions that fits the slogans of modern politics of the Western world. He completely misses the point. There are clear signs that the Western Empire is about to fall and this article tries to hide the writing on the wall rather than put it on wide display. And this address has existed for a long time and is clear to everyone. There are lots of articles by scientists from countries outside of Western culture (such as China / Russia / the Arab world) that point to the decline of Europe and the USA. These scientists really do not mention the natural resources and the social gap in the US as main reasons. The real reasons are very clear, it's just that it is considered "not politically correct and not democratic" to say them out loud. In this place, the exploitation of resources, pollution, poverty, corruption and social disparity are noted.
And how surprising: China has huge social gaps, exploitation of natural resources without any consideration, corruption, poverty and yet it is a rising empire and the USA is a declining empire