How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

After doing the reading for this chapter, I feel like if I had my own society, that mine would fail. The five reasons why a society fails are: inadvertent environmental damages, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and the society's response to its environmental problems. While my society would semi-succeed, overall it would collapse from not doing enough to sustain itself. 

Inadvertent environmental damage stems from the properties or people and the properties of the environment. For people it depends on how many trees they cut down per acre per year and for the environment, it depends on how many seedlings germinate per acre and how rapidly saplings grow per year. The environmental properties are split into two groups: fragility and resilience. Only certain societies suffer environmental collapses because of people, fragility of their environment, or both. The more trees we cut down the harder it is going to be for the environment to produce more seedlings and saplings. We can't drain our resources and expect them to just randomly grow back right away. 

We also tend to associate climate change with global warming case by humans, however climate can vary between months or year, not just from humans, but natural forces such as heat put out by the sun, volcanic eruptions, changes in Earth's axis, and changes in the mean and land over the face of the Earth. In many parts of the world climate tends to vary. What most people don't know is that in previous decades and societies, that climate change was more prevalent than it is today. I feel like back in New Jersey, we can feel the effects of climate change. For example, this summer it was cold everyday until mid-June. then it finally decided to get warm, however even now it is extremely hot during the day but chilly at night. 

Most historical societies have been geographically close enough to each to have contact. Relations with societies may be intermittently or chronically hostile. A society can be very strong, however it can succumb to even the slightest attack when it becomes weakened, especially if it becomes weakened by environmental damage. The Roman Empire is a prime example of this. For over 1,000 years they fought off the Barbarians until one day they just collapsed under their attack. The question is were the barbarians that strong or was the Roman Empire just weakened?

Most societies depend on friendly neighbors for imports or goods or cultural ties, however this can be dangerous because if your trade partner becomes weakened and can no longer benefit you, your society will in turn become weakened as well. I relate this one to my own life because I know in order to get something done I need to do it the right way. If I wait around for someone else to do it, it won't get done or it won't get done the right way. 

Different societies respond differently to similar problems. Some societies have developed successful forest management in regards to deforestation, while some societies failed to develop successful forest management and collapsed as a result. A society's response depends on its political, economic, and social institutions and on its cultural values.