Collapse and The Long Emergency

The texts, The Long Emergency by James H. Kunstler and Collapse by Jared Diamond, both share the similar topic of social, economical, and political collapse within a society. Collapse is the process of Diamond speaks about how Columbus tried to convert Mayans into Christianity. This destroyed their social life because they were being forced into a religion, rather than being given a choice. Like-wise the Americans were also finding difficulty in there social standards because their need for oil led to many wars. This paved the line that divided the nations at war from being friends. This also led to Americas selfishness. Kunstler described how ,economically, oil played a major part with making money. Once the dependency on oil reached extreme measures and oil began to decrease in amount, the economy worsened. The Mayans also had a resource in which they depended upon. This was crops. Unfortunately, a drought hit and destroyed the ability to grow the same amount of crops that were produced before. Crops supported the Mayan nation economically. Once this drought hit, the economy decreased as well. Politically The Mayans had conflict between the royal families. This is similar to the disagreements the American government has with other nations. Both society's governments argue about power. The sense of parallelism between these two nations that is depicted seems to implement that a nation that goes through collapse follows a series of stages. This in turn shows the similarities and differences between two different nations that undergo the same catastrophic procedure.