A summary of Jared Diamond's speech on why societies collapse

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You can find the complete speech here.

This is a summary of Jared Diamond TED speech on why and how societies collapse.

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Jared findings are focused on the mystery of societies which have collapsed, the reasons behind fragility of societies and the tips which can be used to avoid it.  

First, what is understood from his speech is that, there is no single factor which would cause society's collapse, but there s a set of different factors. Jared's findings summarizes these factors as a five- point checklist as follows:

1. Human impact on the environment in destroying the resources
2. Climate change
3. Relations with neighboring friendly societies.
4. Relations with hostile societies.
5. Political, economical, social and cultural factors in society that determines the society's capability to solve the environmental problems.

Based on his speech, the three main common themes behind different collapses are:
First, rapidity of collapse after a society reaches its peak. Second, environmental factors that make some societies more brittle than others. And the third theme is divided into two main factors: Conflicts between short-terms interests of decision-makers, and long-term interests of society, strongly held values which are misused in irreverent situations.

To help avoiding these problems, we should work towards understanding those things we don't know and to work towards putting in action, those things we have understood so far.

Summarized by M.Goli, February 11, 2013