The main issue I had with these videos was Jared Diamond’s voice. I am sure that does not sound good, but instead of watching the videos I came agree a transcript from a college where he was discussing his theories on these subject matters.
I believe Mr. Diamond made some great points some of which were prior knowledge to me but I thought it was fascinating how he pointed out certain things. For example, over the years there have been many cultures and societies that have failed and typically those are the ones we focus on and learn about in classes, but I had never thought of Japan as a long term successful society until today.
Consider Japan. In the 1600's, the country faced its own crisis of deforestation, paradoxically brought on by the peace and prosperity following the Tokugawa shoguns' military triumph that ended 150 years of civil war. The subsequent explosion of Japan's population and economy set off rampant logging for construction of palaces and cities, and for fuel and fertilizer.
Japan is responsible for deforestation of their own lands but while they did so it is important to recognize their efforts to regrow their native lands with the creation of their self-planted plantations.
I never thought about the fact that America without its 50 states would never survive. We have grown so tightly together that each area brings its own something to the table to complete what we are. Although that sounds great, I believe without the aid and resources of many of our foreign allies we would not be where we are today.
We should not solely learn about the societal failures in school, it should be made clear that with these failures many cultures were able to thrive and become great powers today like Japan and Iceland. Today Iceland has the sixth-highest per-capita income in the world and that is definitely due to a societal failure we learned about in school.
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