[ossig] WHY DO SOME SOCIETIES MAKE DISASTROUS DECISIONS?

["Mukhsein Johari" <mukhsein@email.com>]

Somewhat off-topic but has some relevence to our cause of changing societies (whoah!) to new paradigms (FOSS)...heh.

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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge114.html

Education is supposed to be about teachers imparting knowledge to students. As every teacher knows, though, if you have a good group of students, education is also about students imparting knowledge to their supposed teachers and challenging their assumptions. That's an experience that I've been through in the last couple of months, when for the first time in my academic career I gave a course to undergraduates, highly motivated UCLA undergraduates, on collapses of societies. 

Why is it that some societies in the past have collapsed while others have not? I was discussing famous collapses such as those of the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest, Classic Maya civilization in the Yucatan, Easter Island society in the Pacific, Angkor Wat in southeast Asia, Great Zimbabwe in Africa, Fertile Crescent societies, and Harappan Indus Valley societies. These are all societies that we've realized, from archaeological discoveries in the last 20 years, hammered away at their own environments and destroyed themselves in part by undermining the environmental resources on which they depended.
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Regards,
Mukhsein Johari

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