The World's Fair

Yesterday I had an opportunity to listen to and to say hello to Ronald Wright. This is a fellow who has crossed a number of disciplinary boundaries in terms of his writing prowess, and winning lots of literary awards along the way.

He's trained in Archeology and Anthropology, and as far as last night was concerned, focused on two of his books: "The Scientific Romance", and "A Short History of Progress."

Both are examplary and worth picking up. His language is just the sort that is lovely to read. In fact, I made previous comments to his bok "A Short History" in a previous post, but I'll reprint some of his prose here so that you get the idea.

" Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, further, and more laden than any before. We may not be able to foresee every reef and hazard, but by reading her compass bearing and headway, by understanding her design, her safety record, and the abilities of her crew, we can, I think, plot a wise course between the narrows and bergs looming ahead.

And I believe we must do this without delay, because there are too many shipwrecks behind us. The vessel we are now aboard is not merely the biggest of all time; it is also the only one left. The future of everything we have accomplished since our intelligence evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years. Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes."

What that book is about is the recurring pattern of civilizations crashing, with 5 specific examples in history where for better or for worse, a successful community inadvertantly created their own demise, usuallly through resource missappropriation (actually very similar to Jared Diamond's collapse, although it looks like Wright's book actually came out well before Mr. Diamond's).

Last night, one of the cultures he talked about were the Sumerians, who were arguably the first real civilization, prominent at around the mid 4th millenium BC. Stationed in Mesopotamia (roughly where southearthern Iraq is today), this community essentially thrived due to the advancement of single form of technology - that being irrigation.

However, this same technology that allowed them to expand so effectively, also led to their collapse. Wiki describes it well:

Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. The evaporation of irrigated waters left dissolved salts in the soil, making them difficult for agriculture. There was a major depopulation of southern Mesopotamia, affecting many of the smaller sites, from about 2000 BC, leading to the collapse of Sumerian culture.

Cue in "CRASHING" sound. Salinity! That's what did them in.

Anyway, the purpose of the book and also the above passage is to say, "Look people. Crashing is all fine and dandy, but now we're talking (with globalization and transportation as it is) about making analagous mistakes at a much bigger level." Or as Ronald definitely wouldn't put it. "You should be shitting your pants, seriously."

What's also kind of pertinent (from a writing point of view anyway), was that he said that his work of fiction "A Scientific Romance" (which was written before "A Short History") is actually the fictional counterpart to the "Short History."

You see, "A Scientific Romance" is about a time machine, where a character makes his way to London, hundreds of years in the future. Except that like most science fiction with this theme, he finds only evidence of a major collapse - it's really quite remarkable in that the connotations to global warming, genetic technology the novel contains, despite being written 12 or so years ago, or eerily cogniscent.

It's funny, but I read A Scientific Romance years ago, and thought it was a pretty nice read, but now knowing a bit of the background behind both books, I'm gonna have to pick it up again.

Lovely, how literature is sometimes, isn't it?

Anyway, this post has definitely had an anthropology flavour to it, which I guess is appropriate since it's a good way to mention a new anthropology carnival called "The Four Stone Hearth" (web page for the carnival: http://fourstonehearth.net/ ). You should go check it.