Diamond Excerpt

Being able to look back at previous civilizations is a privilege for us.  We should not argue about why a certain civilization collapsed or whose fault it may have been but rather we should study what we know about them and apply their success to ourselves and learn from their mistakes.  By doing this we make similar problems that we might come to later easier and will be more prepared.  While our better knowledge of technology and medicines helps to reduce some of the problems earlier civilizations had deal with, we do still have some similarities with them such as globalization and overpopulation such Diamond describes in this excerpt.  We need to use our resources as best we can without becoming completely dependent on them.  They will eventually run out and if we do not plan ahead now we could end up in the same situations as previous civilizations.  These ideas are seen when Diamond talks about his visits to the two farms that are similar yet different at the same time.  We do influence our environment to some extent but sometimes the economy and natural disasters get the best of everyone.  Seeing how these problems had affected the farms Diamond visited brings these ideas to life to because I am sure we can all imagine what would happen if this was local.  We need to be thankful that here in southwest Florida we have been fortunate to have not been hit too hard by the economy and be smart by learning from what has already happened elsewhere and from before.