A question of blame when society falls

Gund people dug out this NYT piece published on last Christmas (I wonder why that day, in case too many people got Diamond's book as a Christmas present?). The author George Johnson criticized Diamond for being too simple and "imposed his own cosmology".

For me the first part of the criticism is not legitimate. It is a matter of scales. Diamond covered thousands of years' human history at continental scales. What matters at these scales? The power of nature. To use Johnston's words, "...the accidents of geography — the availability of raw materials and crops, a hospitable climate, accessible trade routes and even the cartographical shapes of continents — step forth as prime movers." It almost feels Diamond wrote Collapse while living in a space station, what one could see from there? Certainly not humans, nor their struggle, not even the Great Wall.

Anthropologists, on the other hand, are much down to the earth. As Johnston acknowledged, "...(they) spend their lives reveling in minutiae — the specifics and contradictions of human culture. " No wonder the words of "a big picture man" are not a compliment for those anthropologists interviewed by Johnson.

Society needs both visions. The beauty of Diamond's book lies in its simplicity. We are lucky to have people like him, who is capable of jumping out of our day-to-day life and sends us a simple but alerting message among all the noises. On the other hand, nobody said we should give up trying and nobody negates system complexity.

The second part of the criticism is more of an issue, especially for people working at board scales. It is natural that we all probe with our own lenses (and one can argue "scientific objectivity" is one of them). But it is not OK to ignore other perspectives.