Alfred McCoy on Dim American Futures

Somehow (one has a hard time retracing steps through the web) I came across this very interesting article. University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy has given this subject some thought. Of course, like any prediction, it is uncertain. However, I do think that historians have a better perspective than most about how history may flow. I doubt that history has "laws", but it does follow patterns. We're all animals, and we love patterns. Culture, after all, is a pattern very widely accepted in a group. The culture of nations and how they interact also follows patterns. The pattern, can change, or there may be a choice of patterns. So, this is a "for what it's worth" piece, and I think it's worth something. It should lead us to think about our alternative futures. We, like Scrooge, have many ghosts of Christmas future in front of us. The way the U.S. electorate and political leadership are acting now, I'm not so optimistic. I hope I'm overly pessimistic. Anyway, McCoy provides some sobering thought.

Stephen Walt on Jared Diamond & Decline

In his most recent FP post, "What I Learned from Jared Diamond", Stephen Walt considers the elements of decline that Diamond discusses in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail. Walt gives a succinct account of the factors that Diamond catalogues in his book, and Walt considers current U.S. problems in light of those factors, such as groupthink, tragedy of the commons, failure to anticipate, failure to detect (e.g., climate change amidst fluctuations in the weather), etc. Walt's points are well taken. In summary, both as individuals and as societies, we have to have our crap-detectors on full blast 24-7. (Thanks, Neil Postman.)