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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> I have not read that book. I tend to avoid doomsday, Apocalyptic and "the 
> sky is falling or it might if we don't do something drastic" books.

I've read it 'kiver to kiver' a couple of times.  While one extreme is to fly 
about like 'Chicken Little' as you are pointing out, the other extreme is to 
bury one's head in the sand.  

And it is possible you have miscued on the book.  Half of the entire text of 
this very, very long book is devoted to societies that recognized cultural 
and 
ecological disasters and avoided them ... and prospered for thousands of 
years.  The subtitle is more descriptive of the book "How Societies Choose to 
Fail 
or Succeed".  As an example the author describes how the small island of 
Tikopia was facing ecological ruin because of raising pigs.  The islands 
population agreed in 1600 (before European contact) to get rid of all the 
pigs.  They 
did so, stabilized their soil and forests, and continue more or less unabated 
to this day.

The collapsed societies he describes almost all had at least one thing in 
common, it is clear that they saw economic or environmental disaster coming 
(it 
is clear because archeologist can see what was coming even to this day, so 
the 
people living right in it could not have helped but notice) and yet ... and 
yet ... some cultural trait caused them to dismiss it, usually (he surmises) 
with "Ah ... don't bring me down with all that doomsday stuff!"  Surmises 
except 
in the case of the Norse  Greenland of which we have a written record.   The 
person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island could look around and see 
what he was doing, see that there were no more trees.   The forest land that 
once surrounded the Anasazi ruins was eroded into desert over an 80 year 
period 
from deforestation and overcropping allowing all the topsoil to be carried 
away 
by deepening and deepening arroyos.  The people clearing land beside an 
arroyo couldn't have helped but see what the result of their actions was 
going to 
be, but they did it anyway.  Why?  Because they didn't want to fill their 
lives 
with all that gloomy stuff.

And so goes the story the author unfolds.  One of the most dramatic was 
comparing Haiti and the Dominican Republic which occupy the same island, one 
is an 
environmentl wasteland and the other environmentally and economically stable. 
 
Yet they were dealt more or less the same hand.  One society succeeds and on 
fails.  The one's that succeeded did so by not sticking their heads in the 
sand and not wanting to be bothered with any talk of doomsday.  The one's 
that 
failed glibly went on and did ignore what to those of later time doing the 
post 
mortem on their societies was obviously the seeds of their doom.

James