Book: 20220529 to 20220805, "Upheaval" by Jared Diamond

20220531 - Prologue: Legacies of Coconut Grove

This book is about seven countries in modern age, how they cop with crises. Help us get deeper understanding of the current world.

Part 1. Individuals
20220613 - 1. Personal crises

"Walden's core message was: I should figure out what I really want in my life, and not be seduced by the vanity of recognition." p29

Table 1.2. Factors related to the outcomes of national crises p50

1. National consensus that one’s nation is in crisis

2. Acceptance of national responsibility to do something

3. Building a fence, to delineate the national problems needing to be solved

4. Getting material and financial help from other nations (too less friends?)

5. Using other nations as models of how to solve the problems

6. National identity (too much national pride?)

7. Honest national self-appraisal

8. Historical experience of previous national crises

9. Dealing with national failure

10. Situation-specific national flexibility

11. National core values (lacking common core values?)

12. Freedom from geopolitical constraints (too less friends and resources?)

Based on the factor list above, China cannot handle crisis well, as it lacks 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Part 2. Nations: Crises that unfolded
20220619 - 2. Finland's war with the Soviet Union

Finland insisted on their core values: independency and language, but comprised on other less important values  to some extent, such as free speech and democracy. Their flexibility is impressive.

This trategy is correct to both states and individuals. We don't have perfect environment. From time to time, we have to comprise on many things.

Is there something that Australia can learn from Finland? Australia is quite far away from China, and Australia has powerful allies, such as United States and Japan. But it's same that no state should rely on foreign support.

Lucky that China is not as powerful as Russia. Hopefully.

The current war in Ukraine may last for years. And Russia will lose miserably!

20220624 - 3. The origins of modern Japan

In the Meiji Era many Japanese, including leaders of Japan's armed forces, had made visits abroad. They thereby obtained detailed first-hand knowledge of Chia, the U.S., Germany, and Russia and their armies and navies. p130

Apart from this, I believe the critical reason is, they admit that they have a lot of things to learn, and they are in the weaker side. But many other countries, they believe they are in the stronger side, so they are not able of seeing the reality.

Meiji Restoration started at 1868, ended at 1912.In total 44 years. In 1937, Japan started full scale war agains China, which is 69 years after Meiji Restoration started.

China started Reform And Opening-up in 1978. 44 years have passed.

As China doesn't allow freedom of expression, and China is a centralized state, it's more likely that China will start to expand in 10 years, especially when younger generation of state leaders pop up.

20220630 - 4. A Chile for all Chileans

Don't trust someone because he/she is charming and wise. We should only trust the mechanism of power balance.

Tolerance is the most important virtue to a society. We need to learn how to cooperate with people we dislike, and thoughts that we think absurd or hatred.

Societies evolve all the time, slowly. We need to be patient to get the better result.

People needs to think and talk about the past to learn lessons. That's why expression freedom is so important. It's the foundation of social envolvement. To some extent, the more people are allowed to talk about the shameful past, the faster they would advance ahead.

20220706 - 5. Indonesia, the rise of a new country

There is no way to accelerate the natural evolution of Meme. Even with great help of external environment, such as modern economical theory, democratic institution theory, and excellent models.

Immature Capitalism always brings in corruption, which is pretty bad, Communism brings in disaster.

Surprise to know that the massacre in 1965 is not just about killing Chinese, but more about killing the one who may support communism. However, half million death in 1965 means 5% of population was removed!

Anyway, Indonesia is evolving! So far, there is no sign of Indonesia to go down.

PS: we should never trust someone by his or her charisma.

20220716 - 6. Rebuilding Germany

What's the reason that Germany arised so quickly?

The threat from Communism and Marshall Plan are the direct reason, geographical location, highly educated people and industrial tradition all contributed. But I believe the critical reason is the crisis everyone focused on. It's similar to Israel and Japan. Every citizen knew that distratrous result was imminent. Under this stress, there were less corruption and better cooperation. The society was running productively, as everyone tried to help.

The 22 year interval is interesting. Different generation has different experience when they were young, and they start to take control of the country around 22 years later. In China, when someone is around 22 in 2014, will be able of changing the society 22 years later. So, more likely that China will take big step at 2036, which is 14 years away.

20220717 - 7. Australia : who are we?

Why Australia doesn't want to be indepedent? My guess is, there is no adequate population and fertile environment. Australian doesn't feel safe. It took 60 years for Australian to produce enough food to feed themselves. (from 1788 to 1840s)

Why White Australia? It's inherited from UK. Why UK adopted White Policy? Similar to Japan. Both are (relatively) isolated islands which is big enough to be self-sufficient. They never got the chance to get used to immigrants.

USA and Australia both got the discrimination MEME from UK.

Why Australia believe that USA would protect Australia? USA did it in WW2.

Part 3. Nations and the world: crises underway
20220721 - 8. What lies ahead for Japan?

What's wrong with Japan? I think the root cause is their monoculture. Korea and Japan also have this problem. Monoculture helped them grow quickly, but it also leads to dead end.

We need multiculture to keep our society creative, so we can find the right solution to solve the problem.

Not like Meji period, there is no one Japan can learn from to solve the low fertility rate issue this time.

To apologize is to admit having done a wrong. To express regrets or remorse merely expresses their present subjective feelings. p314

Japanese try their best to protect the environment, but they have no interest in protecting other countries' environment. They still feel that they live in an isolated environment. Sooner or later, other countries will start to put restrict on natural resource export, and that's a serious threat to Japan.

Technical progress may help to reduce the problem regarding natural resource shortage, such as Robots, solar panel, etc.

What's going to happen next? I think Japan's economy will go down slowly, for very long time. MMT doesn't solve problems, it just postpone them.

20220724 - 9. What lies ahead for the United States? Strengths, and the biggest problem

Why people become less tolerant? Radio, TV, Computer, Internet, smartphone.

Online social network is replacing face-to-face network. The major problem of online activities is lacking skin in the game. People don't take consequence whatever they do online. This include people work for media industry.

Supermarket is bad as it doesn't encourage people talk to others. Online shopping is much worse. Modern society turns neighbours into strangers.

COVID-19 make things much worse. Work from home means much less face-to-face interaction, so less skin in the game.

Big data is training our brain. Online activities are training our brain. This changes how we cooperate with other people.

Is this the reason that fertility rate keeps dropping?

20220729 - 10. What lies ahead for the United States? Three "Other" Problems

Election. Inequality. Public expenditure.

Competition is double-sided blade, it can also leads to destruction.

When should we leave competition aside? When we need to consider long term benefit.

How can American save themselves? Read more? Most of our life targets are not important at all.

20220801 - 11. What lies ahead for the world?

I am surprised that Jared Diamond doesn't mention AI. The population shrinking in western countries is also not regarded as a threat.

Based on my calculation, nuclear winter may only last for a few months, and it would only affect small areas.

I believe it's less about natural resources, and more about the development of science and technology.

I am pessimistic, but the world are not crashing. Automation can definitely helps to solve population shrinking issue, and infinite almost free energy from sunlight and wind can help to resist most of the extreme weather.

However, when most of the glaciers melted, most of the rivers will dry up in summer, which would kill most of the crops. If the food production drop 20%, hundreds of millions of people may die from famine.

20220805 - Epilogue: Lessons, questions, and outlook

This book doesn't tell us how to handle national crisis, but helps us to recognize national crisis, and making more accountable prediction (but still not reliable).

Samuel Johnson: "Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." p449

Can I concentrate without being hanged in a fortnight?! I need to slow down, and think about it before moving. Temptations are not attractive when we think about them carefully. Most of them are not important at all. We are just used to them, and so do it without thinking.

Jared Diamond ignored MEME. He believe that people are rational. This is not always the case. But I am not sure what the best example is to see the conflicts between rationality and MEME. Maybe some core values are actually not that important?