The common topic of debate that is if all civilizations are doomed to collapse because it hold the ability to prevent or slow down the collapse of any civilization. Historians such as Tainter (In Collapse and Sustainability: Rome, the Maya, and the Modern World)and Greer (In How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse) have created analyzing both fallen and modern civilizations, both of these authors believe to some extent that a lack of resources is the beginning cause of a collapse of a civilization.
There are some historians that believe that not all civilizations are doomed to collapse due to that previous civilizations were not able to properly and accurately handle their problems and as long as you sustain stability than that civilization will not collapse. Most civilizations that are used as evidence in these articles are Rome which fell due to its lack of ability to provide (resources) for its army and over sized empire since it lacked a large enough income rate toustain its attack on strong but poor civilizations such as the northern europeans.
Tainter also included modern problems such as fossil fuels and how the switch from them to renewable resources would drastically affect the lifestyle of most everyday american life. Most if not all civilizations are doomed to fall due to the constant increase in complexity and not being able to sustain its stability due to it inevitable lack of resources to act in accordance with the overwhelming complexity.
Mr. Greer argues that most civilizations begin to fall once its maintenance production is greater its capital production starting with contraction of the civilization first resulting in a maintenance Crisis “in which capital of all kinds cannot be maintained and is converted to waste resulting in a decrease in population, information, economic stability resulting in the beginning stages of the collapse of civilization.
To retaliate this crisis the civilization would need to find a suitable amount of resources to balance the economy returning the civilization to a stable state, but if the consumption of resources is greater than the income of the resources the civilization will fall under a depletion crisis which has “amplified” certain features t maintenance crisis according to Mr. Greer.
These are the crisis’s that have caused certain historical civilizations to crash and burn such as the Western Roman Empire. Greer said that the fall of Rome “was a catabolic collapse driven by a combined maintenance and resource crisis. While the ancient Mediterranean world, like imperial China, was primarily dependent on readily replenished resources, the Empire itself was the product of an anabolic cycle fueled by easily depleted resources and driven by Roman military superiority. (Greer page 8) As Greer has shown the fall of the roman empire was due to lack of maintenance and available resources because rome was an empire that thrived upon the taking over of other countries but rome encountered powerful tribes in the north that did not have much valuable resources so it was using more energy than resources it was receiving causing it to have a lack of resources and maintenance in west rome.
The emperor of rome than split the empire in two which ultimately caused west rome to fall because they had more land to protect and “13” the income of resources leading it to collapse. Greer explains that this is how west Rome was doomed to fall and he explains that the fall of east rome was due to similar aspect which is the muslim conquests. This is because the countries lacked the resources to fuel the conquest to prevent the invasions by muslim conquests.
This is the basis of Greer’s article except for the hypothetical he presents which talks about two species one which is the R-species and K-species one which has the ability to “A society that maximizes its production of capital,(… ) prospers in an environment with substantial uncaptured resources but falters once these are exhausted. ” (Greer, page, 11), which basically means that when R-species can have a strong production of capital when when it’s resources are depleted than its society collapses.
While the other’s ability is that to “use key resources more sustainably at the cost of decreased production of capital. ” (Greer, page, 11) meaning it can use resources at a lesser diminishing rate so that the resources last longer but in doing so the production in capital is much lower. These hypotheticals represent Rome since it uses its resources at too high of rate and was eventually not able to obtain new resources resulting in a collapse like rome while the other species represents the holy roman empire with sufficient resources for most people to survive but a low capital production rate.
This is too, talk about which forms of resources usage is more efficient in long term. Greer argues that most civilizations are doomed to fall unless they avoid any of the crises that he listed. Joseph A. Tainter argues that not all civilizations are doomed to fall but it would be incredibly difficult he argues” Sustainability emerges therefore from success in addressing existential problems, that is, problems of continuity.
As a historical endeavor, sustainability concerns the long-term success of problem-solving efforts. “(Tainter page 2) this basically explains that a civilization would eventually collapse under the pressure and lack of resources due to its complexity because every time that a civilization solves a national problem its level f complexity increase so that will not repeat itself, but in doing this it shows what is know as the law of diminishing terms (“best-first principle”) which is when you use more energy to eceive the same out come wasting more and more energy every time you need to use more energy just receive the same outcome. Tainter describes it as a reaching for a fruit and says “tend first to pluck the lowest fruit, going to higher branches only when those lower no longer hold fruit. ” this represents civilization because the fruit representing “normal” society reaching for represents the resources that we use to obtain the fruit and the need to reach higher show a decrease in resources.
This shows that eventually the tree will hold no more fruit making it incapable of the usual society. Tainter brings up two modern day complexities that show the increase in complexity. Tainter says how 9//1 and fossil fuels forced america to increase in complexity to prevent future problems, but in doing so it increases how much resources we use to continue staying “safe” from these problems. Tainter proves why his argument by bring in both modern and historical evidence of how complexity has or will cause the fall of civilizations.
Greer addresses how the fall of maya did not follow the his ideology of a collapse of civilizations since the mayans would purposely decrease their maintenance production below their capital production by “limiting the growth of capital”(Greer page 9) so the capital production would be higher than maintenance production and then Greer goes on to list several more economies where this transpired. Tainter also writes near the end how it possible that not all civilizations are doomed if the civilizations can overcome the possibility to lower their complexity which he talks about being a possible way to prevent collapse.
Although Tainter does signafy that this would be very difficult if not impossible. The philosophy of if all civilizations is an important study because if a civilizations are doomed then how could we prolong the inevitable, but if it is possible then how do we prevent the collapse of civilization. Historians like Greer and Tainter attempt to look on previous prosperous civilizations such as rome and china to attempt to discover ways to prevent the repetition of history. A historian’s job is too discover the way to stop or deal with the ever evolving of a civilization’s complexity.