How power seeks above all to keep the ...

Historical evocations are remarkable. Jared Diamond is initially ornithologist. In order to study the birds in Papua New Guinea, he had to learn the different and numerous dialects of the island with diverse cultures because of the isolation of a village with the other due to an impenetrable vegetation and topography very "crumpled". All this I learned later in another book J.Diamond: "From the inequality between societies - Essay on Man and Environment in history" translated "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies "(Guns, Germs and Steel: the fate of human societies). This book has also received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 and is the subject of a series of three documentaries of 55 minutes produced by National Geographic Society. For me, it's even harder. This book challenges all preconceptions about the causes of economic inequality between North and South, on the alleged Western superiority, etc.

"Collapse" ... I had the chance to go to a conference in Namur University Faculties November 30, 2008. It was in English, but as I read the book in French, I understand quite well. Great moment, not at all preachy, well documented, scientifically argued "without taboos or deceit", dare I write well. The author sometimes admitted having no definitive answer to questions, do not favor the hypothesis about the collapse of a particular ancient society. The important thing to understand is that the collapse of a civilization is always involved because of the combination of several factors.

The factor "climate change", it often occurs, is NEVER decisive in the extinction of a society. This is when many factors combine together the effects are devastating and irreversible. The example of Greenland enlightens us. Northern Europeans come there with their culture, their agriculture and animal husbandry, beliefs, taboos, religion, etc. They settled there in a period of relative warming of the ice island - not at all incidentally green. They occupy two locations in the south, the only places where livestock graze. They despise the Inuit with whom they have no contacts, import of cattle, status symbol. Jared Diamond defines religion as Bourdieu, that is to say as a legitimation of power to accept the rule of a self-proclaimed elite of a people who can rebel since power is willed by God. Challenging this power is therefore an offense against God, blasphemy. Religion is thus a party to the symbolic violence justifying the illegitimate domination of a small group (the nobility at that time) on all others.

From this, we know that the elites want above all to differentiate themselves from the mass and maintain power by all means. As social and religious order is favorable, the elite breed society they know in Europe, in defiance of climatic constraints of remoteness, of scarce local resources (such as wood, fodder). The wisdom would have dictated to learn from Inuit who were there for centuries and which were well acclimated. But as the Inuit were considered subhuman and ignorant uneducated (and non-Christians as well), it is considered that their experience of the island is without interest.

However, Inuit living from fishing and hunting, build their homes and dress with shoestring. Europeans want to live livestock and agriculture. They import animals, seeds, wood, tools, clothing, etc. They build hard houses, churches, barns, etc. The first years, a warming of +/- 2 ° C (found through modern techniques for analyzing ice core sampling in the twentieth century) allows them to raise sufficient fodder for cattle rearing. Cattle, as everyone knows, are animals that require attentive care and a very rich and abundant food are less hardy compared to sheep or goats. Unfortunately this was short-lived warming. In fact, the freezing period gets longer than a few weeks in the spring and late summer. Forage soon runs out. Over the years, landfills analyzed by scientists show that the European diet changes. Cattle, sheep and one passes then to other small animals consume less forage. But still no trace of seal or finished fish! A roof ... Then the meat virtually disappeared from the diet.

It seems that the elites have introduced food banned religious. Imports cost more expensive than that reported livestock and agriculture. But any effort to "adapt to living conditions in Greenland has been drafted by the Europeans. The situation at the beginning hardly viable is inexorably deteriorated due to the gradual lowering of temperatures. The survival could not anyway last. It is not merely the temporary warming that would allow an adaptation of Europeans to the island to settle permanently because they were not inclined from the start to change the way to live or survive in a different environment than the one where they were born.

The presence of northern Europeans has ended after barely a hundred years ... The Inuit lived there before and stayed until today ...

Conclusion: if the interests of an elite command inadequate social realities but which serves their short-term interests to remain in power, it is likely that it acts primarily or exclusively to maintain power.

To draw a parallel with the US president from a Texan family shareholder of oil companies or arms. The fact that he spent eight years in power to use arms (purchased by the government to private companies for the US military) to control the oil market is only reasonable, if not moral. This demonstrates that it is the people that should force them beneficial changes.

This book is a kind of appeal to the citizen to choose his future ...

[Note: I will pass on enough stupid Monde Diplomatique. Finding suspect that French President Sarkozy had alluded positively and publicly to this work (without also derive any teaching deflecting visibly and permanently the policy of his government), the monthly published in 2008 an article denouncing the character Diamond exclusively Malthusian theses. Namely: the genocide in Rwanda would be only due to overcrowding. Diamond therefore recommend to limit births to limit and prevent future famines major dramas. Conclusion of course incomplete, simplistic reading of the book biased by the primary anti-Sarkozysme journalist. Apart from the chapter on Rwanda where overcrowding actually causes a serious problem of access to land (the population doubles every 17 years there!), Diamond has absolutely not a Malthusian worldview. Reduce the message of the book of this observation is simply false and intellectually dishonest.

But the informed reader will be its own view of "Collapse" Jared Diamond will purchase all the books in a row.]