From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Tue 15 Feb 2005 - 04:04:26 GMT
As most of you are well aware, I have been talking about how bleak future
prospects translate through xenophobic memes into wars.
I finished a 20 page article on the subject just before I read Diamonds new
book _Collapse_.
Choice quote from page 516 (after a discussion of the same list of
countries that have serious environmental and serious social problems):
"Today, just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed,
overpopulated, or both become at risk of getting politically stressed, and
of their governments collapsing. When people are desperate, undernourished,
and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as
responsible for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at
any cost. They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start
civil wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become
terrorists, or they support or tolerate terrorism."
Definitely worth reading, though I obviously think he could have gone
further into evolutionary psychology.
Keith Henson
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