Jared Diamond in conversation with Terrence McNally at Live Talks Los Angeles

jared diamond is a professor of geography at UCLA he's been elected to the National Academy of Sciences the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society among as many awards are the Japan's Cosmo Prize a MacArthur Foundation fellowship those are the ones they call the genius grants and the Lewis Thomas prize honoring the scientist as poet I like that one his books include collapse the world until yesterday the Pulitzer Prize winning Guns Germs and Steel and his latest app evil turning points for nations in crisis Jared I like people to get a feel for the people behind the work and the ideas and I noticed that I often start by asking people about their path but your path is quite circuitous but I notice on your website you have a section you title how I came to my mix of interests so briefly how did you by ursa Kudus path my father was a physician my mother was a linguist and concert pianist and so I was interested both in the humanities and writing and science I was initially premed in Annie last semester of my college career I decided I wanted to do science rather than med medicine and so I got a PhD in physiology I was one of the world's expert on the gallbladder for several decades I talked medical students at UCLA but I become a birdwatcher at age seven so I began a second career on new guinea birds when I was 28 years old and I've kept that up and then finally as my interest shifted history in geography in 2002 I closed my physiology lab and moved from UCLA's medical school to the college so I'm now in professor of geography and I teach geography to undergraduates and that's the path okay and one thing I asked him backstage if he's going back to New Guinea and the answer is every year and a half and that's what the matrimonial traffic will bear since 28 that's just fabulous I interviewed you in 2005 on your book collapse and I remember I particularly appreciated the subtitle how societies choose to fail or succeed particularly the word choose what were just to sort of set a foundation in that realm what were the key lessons of that book that book was mainly about societal collapses or avoiding collapses in the past before globalization that meant that in the past societies would collapse or survive one by one when a society collapsed like Easter Island or the Maya the repercussions did not travel around the world main influences on societal collapses in the past often were environmental influences today in this globalized world societies are interconnected it's hard for societies to collapse one by one instead the risk that we face today is of worldwide collapse right now this book for those who don't know applies what works with individuals in crisis to will that work with nations in crisis how do the two line up together how did this book happen this book happened in in two ways one is that when I look back on the countries where I've lived for the last 60 years the countries that I know best where I speak the language they've had crises I was either living in them in the run-up to a crisis like Chile or in the aftermath of a crisis like Indonesia or during a slow crisis like Australia in Germany that was one of the two pieces that went into the book the other pieces that my wife Marie is a clinical psychologist and in the first wait year of our marriage Marie was doing a specialty in what's called crisis therapy which is not the usual long term therapy where you can work with someone for three years but it's when someone comes in with an acute crisis typically breakdown of a relationship death of a loved one a setback to health or to finances and as you all know you've all been through personal first all of us have been through personal crises and you know that you have to figure out something fast because you can't live in limbo forever you have to figure out what did I do wrong to get into this mess what about myself needs changing and what is okay and it's retaught with me about these outcome predictors for those of us in in going through a personal crisis I realized that some of them mapped closely on to outcome predictors for national crises because nations as well as people get help from allies not from individuals nations as well as people can look to other nations or people as models but there were also differences such as that nations have leaders and we individuals do not have leaders mm-hmm and so you you you begin to notice that it might work you kind of track it and then jump into it deeply and how how quickly you begin to go this is this this this works this is making sense and you knew there was something there when I started the book I knew that there was something there because we had done this specialty in 1982 and I began to write the book no I did not get triggered by the 2016 elections I began to write the book when I finished my last book in 2013 and so I had had 31 years to reflect on these things that I knew that there was something there okay and one thing you say it and I think it's worth going into here you say that this book is comparative narrative and exploratory what what and I think it's interesting that you set that out as you begin what do you mean by those let's start off with comparative most history books are single case studies you get books on late 17th century Germany 18th century France this book is not a single nation case study instead it compares seven of the countries that I know best comparisons offer disadvantages and advantages in a book on Germany alone you can all 400 pages to Germany in a book on seven countries I get to devote only a few dozen pages to each country so there's let's detail but from comparisons you see questions and you can answer questions that would never occur to you if you looked at one country alone and an example of that is the American Civil War there are all these wonderful books on the American Civil War and with the whole book on the Civil War you can devote six pages to the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg but in a book on the American Civil War alone you'd never notice one of the most interesting questions about the American Civil War which is that in our Civil War at the end the victors did not kill the losers there was only one person killed the Commandant of Andersonville Prison war camp whereas in many civil wars the Spanish Civil War in the Finnish Civil War the victors did kill the losers and large numbers so a comparative study of looking at different civil wars makes you realise there is a big question there and what is the reason for that that's what you can gain by comparison very good very good and I know you another thing you mention is you say that you you had hoped originally to incorporate some modern quantitative methods to this which I which is sort of an old dog trying new tricks there right that you hadn't done that before and what happened to that hope it proved not feasible it proved not feasible first of all because one has to begin by mapping out the terrain by getting a sense of what are the variables and the main questions this book maps out the terrain in order to do a quantitative study I would have to be able to put numbers on things such as help success of making change previous experience but that requires working out sociological social science methods working out mathematical techniques doing the statistics you can't do that until you've mapped out the terrain so that's something for the future we're very good very good um okay so what we've got is we have seven nations and you chose them as you said because they were the ones you knew best I mean people might quibble but why not this one why one and so on but that was the reason and then you choose 12 factors for coping from this individual crisis psychology some examples I did not choose the factors that the 12 factors were ones that Marie and other therapists had seen were important for resolving personal crises and there are things that you know in a personal crisis the first thing you got to do is acknowledge that you're in a crisis otherwise you get nowhere and the next thing you have to do is to acknowledge that you VIRs some responsibility for dealing with a crisis if you just blame it on other people if you say that the problems of the United States are the fault of China and Canada and Mexico and there's nothing that we poor Americans can do you get no ways towards resolving the crisis so Marie and others other psychologists have already identified those factors in the book then I looked at parallels for national crises and some of the way those parallels play out are for instance ego strength national identity that's right yeah there is an example in some cases the mapping is close we as individuals get help from other people nations don't get help from other people nations do or don't get help from other nations so for example after World War two Germany and so many European countries got help from them from the Marshall Plan whereas in 1939 when Finland was attacked by the Soviet Union Finland got help from none of its traditional allies there is a close parallel more distant parallel is the one that you mentioned namely individuals have something that psychologists call ego strength a person is more likely to get through a crisis if you have a sense of yourself self confidence if your image of yourself doesn't depend upon other people well countries of course don't have ego strength but countries have something that the idea of ego strength suggests and that is national identity some countries have a strong national identity like the United States and Germany and Finland whereas Indonesia a country that I've been working in since 1979 has a weaker national identity for the obvious reason that Indonesia became independent only in 1949 whereas we've had more than two centuries to the national identity yeah and I would imagine that when you develop your national identity in emerging globalization it's a lot different than developing that identity back when we were more countries were more isolated that's true in units as in different countries get national national identities in different ways some countries have a national identity that depends upon military successes well Italy today does not have recent military successes Italy's national identity instead depends upon memories of the Roman Empire and today it depends upon Italian style and Italian odd and Italian food the Finnish national identity depends heavily on the very distinctive finished language and Finland's success in the winter war so different countries get their national identities in different ways we're gonna end up spending a fair amount of time on the US and the world but I would love you to pick whether it's let's Chile let's deal with Chile what was the crisis how did the coping mechanisms work and what can we learn from it sure Chile is the South American country the Latin American country that is the most democratic country in Latin America Chile has had a long history almost uninterrupted history until 1973 of democracy and Chileans when I went to live in Chile in 1967 March laying friends began by telling the visiting American we are not like those other Latin America's other Latin American countries that have military dictatorship we know how to govern ourselves that's what they said in 1967 but Chile in 1967 was falling into political polarization between the left and center and right that couldn't compromise and reach agreement on anything intent does that remind you of any country today and in 1967 my Chilean friends didn't see what was coming namely the end of democracy but it came six years later in 1973 when a military coup took over Chile ran Chile for 17 years and smashed World Records for sadism and torture what what are say the outcome predictors that show for Chile in Chile there was selective change we'll all of you know in personal crises you don't change all of yourself you change selectively you change what needs to be changed in Chile the military government replaced democracy with a dictatorship and it changed the economy from government interference to free market but Chile a retained its borders and retained its Catholic identity so Chile I'm Chile illustrates selective change Chile also illustrates strong national identity because when the military government fell in 1990 you would think that that's an opportunity for there to be revenge against those who killed so many Chileans but instead the first socialist president of Chile in 1990 in his inaugural address said what I want what we are going to build as a Chile for all Chileans and now is a euphemism to mean we're not going to take revenge this is a country where the tortured can live together with the torturers and that requires strong national identity for all Chileans whether they tortured or were tortured to live together and how has it gone how is it gone it's gone remarkably well some of the the perpetrators of tortures have been sent to prison but there's not been mass revenge there's not been any killing and Chile today is again the richest or second richest country in Latin America and it's had an uninterrupted history of democracy since 1990 so I would consider this a real success story of selective change yeah and one of the things you point out that I'd never considered was that Chile is in a way to California of South America what why oh I went to Chile because it's the California of Latin America that is California is the Mediterranean zone of the United States a Mediterranean climate or dry climate with wet winters and hot dry summers Chile is the Mediterranean climate of South America just as the Mediterranean in South Africa and Southwest Australia or the other Mediterranean climates around the world Chile in California or climatic equivalents but they're also leaders in their hemispheres that's why the University of California had an exchange program with Chile until it ended with the fall of the government and with breakdown of political genres sure and another Chile is an example of the crisis from within Finland is an example of a crisis from when out right in Chile the crisis was an explosion within the country in Finland the the crisis was that on the night of November 30 1939 Finland with a population then a three million nine hundred thousand was attacked by the Soviet Union with a population of 170 million that place territorial demands on Finland the Soviet Union placed demands on Baltic republics as well nobody thought that a small country like Finland would be so crazy as to resist the Soviet Union but Finland did and it managed to fight the Soviet Union to a standstill preserving its independence unlike Lithuania Latvia and Estonia but a hundred thousand Finns got killed in the process and lots of others got traumatized and the Finns made selective change out of all this Finland remained a liberal democracy but it completely changed its foreign policy towards the Soviet Union because the Finns realized nobody helped us then nobody will help us in the future we have to deal with the Soviet Union by ourselves right and if it means independence with some subjugation we'll take that that's right as an example of the curtailment of Finnish independence the Finns called off a presidential election because the competing candidate displeased the Soviet Union in any Des Moines the United States the idea that the US would call off the election of 2020 because say the Democratic candidate was on pleasing to China unthinkable no democracy would ever do that but the United States is not at risk the way Finland was was at risk so Finland is a democracy that learned just how far it had to compromise with democracy in order to preserve its independence and avoid a hundred thousand Finn's getting killed so I want to just touch on a couple more of the the coping mechanism so we've talked about selective change you don't give up your identity but there are certain things which you want to retain but you're willing to change some things the first to as you said admit you've got a crisis take responsibility don't blame others what are a couple of others that that work very well in in this comparison between individuals and countries another that works well both for individuals and countries and this is something that all of you know I'm sure well from your personal experience a crisis early in life when you've not previously had a crisis why is it that crises are so upsetting for teenagers and for young people it's because that's their first big crisis in life and they don't have a track record of knowing we can get through a crisis whereas if you have a crisis later in life so my most severe professional crisis was at age 21 when I had not faced a big personal crisis I've had professional crises since then but after that I knew that I had gotten through this crisis when I was 21 that gave me confidence that I get through a later one and four countries as well a country that has been through a crisis looks back to that crisis for a strength for example Britain looks back to the Battle of Britain when Britain alone fought off Hitler and the Luftwaffe the British feel we since we did that since we preserved our independence against Hitler we can do anything and again Finland today when Finland last year celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its independence the focus of Finland's independence day was not finished independence in in 20 in 1918 the focus was the winter war when Finland fought Russia to a standstill because Finns today realize since we preserved our independence against the Soviet Union we can do anything now very good let's talk about the u.s. I'm reading a quote here a sense of crisis is widespread in the u.s. today and four major problems are not moving towards solution but are getting worse and first of all does that mean we're admitting we're in a crisis that first step or not and second what are those problems some Americans would godus as in a crisis others would regard us as perhaps borrowing towards a crisis many Americans would deny that we're in a crisis so there's there's not yet a national agreement that we're in a crisis we're out on the night of November 30 1939 when the Soviet Union attacked Finland everything knew that there was a national crisis so Americans are still debating whether we're in a national crisis and Americans also have not accepted responsibility that they got to change something when Japan in 1853 had its couple of centuries of isolation ended by force by the arrival Commodore Perry Perry's fleet every Japanese knew that there was a crisis and that it was Japan's responsibility to dig its way out of the crisis whereas today as I mentioned there are many Americans who don't regard the United States as having to change anything instead they say our crisis is not of our own making it's what China and Mexico are doing to us but if you blame America's problems today on China and Mexico of course we won't make any progress toward solving them because we can't change China and Mexico and what are the four problems you think that constitute this crisis Jared Diamond will now reveal to you something that none of you ever knew which is what are the big problems facing the United States today well this is subject to debate all of you will come up with your own list of four for me the the problem that most concerns me about the United States is the breakdown of political compromise because that's the thing that could end democracy in the United States just as democracy ended in Chile not by a military coup but by what we are doing to ourselves and the other big problems that I see in the United States are restrictions on voting the prevention of would-be voters from registering to vote because that means that we are a democracy on paper but not in reality the decline of socio-economic equality and mobility and finally the decline of government investment in public goods such as education let me give you an example from yesterday because this was just so stunning to me yesterday I took took a taxi ride the taxi driver had an interesting pronunciation they asked where are you from he's from Uzbekistan the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan he's been in the United States for 12 years are you married yes I have an Uzbek wife have you got children my wife and my children they're backin Uzbekistan wired your children back in Uzbekistan they're back in Uzbekistan because public education in Uzbekistan is better than that in the United States particularly math and language education in Uzbekistan of all unlikely countries are better than in the United States and that's because of the precipitous decline in the public education in the United States in the last 50 years because our governments will not spend the money for a public education that was stunning even Borat would be it would be surprised at that I swear so one thing that I noticed is equality and mobility might not be although they're influenced by political but but three of them are challenges to democracy that that we have democracy in name but not necessarily thriving in substance sure the lack of of equality and mobility in the United States means essentially that Americans are throwing away 90% of Americans our country is population or 330 million but if 90% of those 330 million don't have access to a first-class education we are competing with countries like South Korea Finland and Germany and Japan which invests in every one of their citizens so the United States with 330 million people may have 40 50 million well trained people but we are competing with Japan 100 population 127 million and the Japanese government not only does the Japanese government invest in the education of every Japanese in the United States poor or school districts districts we have people of poor get a lower teacher-to-student ratio whereas in Japan poor school districts get more teachers per student that's to say the policy of the Japanese government is to make an effort to pull up school districts where the students aren't getting a good education we're in the United States it's the reverse those who are in bad shape let them get into worse shape and one of the coping factors you say the u.s. is really messing up now is that abusing other countries as models you were kind of referring to that now as we know in individual cases you're having trouble in your marriage you look for models of people who seem to be doing well what are they doing I have been on this horse for you know 20 years the fact that we don't learn from is it a particularly American thing - is it because of our geographical isolation is it because of that belief in exceptionalism what is it let me join you on the horse that you've been on for 20 years every country is the United States is exceptional every country is exceptional but the United States is wrapped up in what we call American exceptionalism the belief that we are so exceptional that we cannot learn from any other country most countries recognize that they can learn from other countries Japan did did it attitude in the United States we think we're so exceptional that we can't learn from other democracies like Canada and Western Europe and Japan and Australia but the United States suffers from the same problems as two other democracies we have problems with health care and we problems with registering voters and we're problems with equality we problems with education and prisons Canada and Western European countries in Japan and so on solve many of these problems in more satisfactory ways we Americans are dissatisfied with how we deal with problems of prisons and education but we refuse to look to our neighbors Canada and Western Europe and Australia because we think we are so exceptional that we have nothing to learn from them which is nonsense utter nonsense oh and and so damaging I mean one example that that I've from this horse that I've been talking about is in Germany very advanced country you know export leader if you have 2000 employees half the board is elected from the workers in America I can't imagine a union even asking for that in Germany when you say that that half the board is elected from the workers that illustrates why Germany has relatively few strikes and relatively high productivity compared to the u.s. in Germany after World War two the businesses and the workers in effect made a pact where the union's agreed not to strike or really to strike and in return companies passed on a share of their increasing profits to the workers whereas in the United States as you know the gap between the income of the CEO and of the average worker is growing and growing yep so finally in your last chapter what lies ahead for the world you finally it was you're comparing individual to nation we take on nations and the u.s. finally but then the world you focus on again for problems which if trends continue you believe you believe will undermine living standards within the next several decades and I saw a headline in a newspaper article recently that said you said we have a 49 percent chance of not I've calculated this very accurately the the chance is a 49 percent that we will not have a happy ending and 50 by 2050 by 2050 yeah well just think of it the reality is that people sometimes ask what will the world be like a thousand years from now who cares what'll be like a thousand yes but what counts is what its gonna be like thirty years from now because as you all know we are on the world is on an unsustainable course we are exploiting fisheries and forests and top soil and water unsustainably at a rate such that within roughly thirty years we're gonna run out of these essential resources unless we figure out how to to manage them in a sustainable way so that's why I say that it's all gonna get settled with the next thirty years whether we have a bright future there and as for you know we've been talking about heavy stuff the United States it's nice now to switch on to a Bagatelle the problems the whole world here again I will reveal to you because none of you know what the problems the whole world are Jared I'm will now reveal to you the serious problems of the world and they are to your great surprise the nuclear risk of nuclear war India Pakistan United States North Korea or a terrorist problem number one problem number two you'll be astonished that climate change is a serious problem problem number three you'll be utterly astounded that non sustainable use of resource is a significant problem and then it will just bug you a belief to hear about problem number four which is inequality around the world that leads to the spread of diseases from countries with poor public health systems to countries with data public health systems and also leads to unstoppable immigration and support for terrorism right isn't that a surprise one I wanted to mention that I got two different emails within the last week from various environmental organizations saying we want you to demand that the media begin to refer to the climate crisis not climate change not global warming but climate crisis how does that fit into all of this and the climate crisis if we had 2,000 years to deal with it it would not be a climate crisis it would be a creeping problem but we do have a climate crisis because within a few decades it's possible that the rise in temperature and in local droughts around the world is going to be beyond our capacity to deal with is going to become irreversible so yes it's not a November 30 1939 Finland crisis where it blows up overnight but instead it's a crisis as it's increasing at a rate such that those of you here who under the age of 60 you're going to see the outcome this is a crisis that will either end happily or unhappily in your lifetimes you said that if you had stopped writing your chapter on the world without the last six pages it would have been much more pessimistic tell about that both at that point in the process let me tease you here the next last chapter in my book authors are shameless is on the problems of the world and the initial draft of my chapter on the problems of the world ended six pages before where it ends now it ended pessimistically it seemed to me that the world did not have a track record of solving difficult problems whereas we in our personal lives you gain strength from knowing that you solve difficult problems before but then I realized and I was able to add the last six pages of that chapter optimistic pages that the world in fact in my lifetime in the last several decades has managed to get together to solve really difficult problems such as eliminating the worst disease of history smallpox that required eliminating smallpox in every country every country of the world and some of those countries the last small cup pox case was in Somalia there is no country more difficult than Somalia to get the last case of smallpox but we did it all the things that the world managed to get together to to solve were getting chlorofluorocarbons out of the atmosphere because they were destroying the ozone layer every country had to agree to that the world managed to get every country on the Seacoast to agree to delineating coastal zones and there were so many arguments about that recently the world has reached a framework for mining mineral nodules from the seabed again every country had to agree and landlocked countries like Bolivian Laos didn't want to agree because they don't have ships that can go mine minerals on the seafloor but a negotiation was reached whereby landlocked countries like Bolivia in Laos get 15% of the proceeds earned by countries that do have a seacoast and do have ships so the world in fact has solved all these really difficult problems since we can do that I think we can solve climate change and nuclear risk and that's why I see the chances that we will have a happy outcome as 51% rather than 49 right now I'm gonna noodle with that and maybe drop you to 50/50 because it seems to me that I would like to the ozone hall the global culture it seemed to me was very different then at this point where we face global problems that demand global collaboration in a way that we never have before this nationalism this this belligerent national looms on the rise what explains the rise and how are we going to deal with that what explains the rise of nationalism which one sees particularly at a distance we Americans can see it in in Western Europe countries like like Hungary and Poland but the fact is that there's also a rise of nationalism and some some segments of the United States what's the reason for it there are multiple things that go into it I think one of one of the reasons is the concern about immigration which is a bigger problem than it is generally acknowledged to be the cruel reality is that the of the world's population of seven and a half billion people 1 billion of us are living at first world living standards and six and a half billion of us are living at developing world living standards which means on the average incomes standards living 30 times poorer the reality is those six and a half billion people out there know perfectly well that they would have a happier life and they would enjoy more personal freedom and they would be in less personal danger if they were in the few countries with a high standard of living but the reality is that you can't pile six and a half billion people into Western Europe and Japan and Australia in the United States so it's a really difficult problem and I think a spill off of that is the growth of nationalism particularly in Western Europe where the European Union for idealistic reasons connected with what happened when they didn't let refugees in after World War Two the European Union has been reluctant to put numbers on what they really can do for immigration so you're saying and where does that fit into the coping mechanisms that particular thing of saying this problem we're we're in denial about and we're not willing to deal with it because because as you said ideologically historic what coping mechanism will correct that the coping medicine mechanism or lack thereof that that illustrates seems to me to be honest self-appraisal again all of you who've been through any life problem braked out of a marriage death of a loved one a career setback you know that in order to solve a problem you got to be honest with yourself you have to recognize what of yourself is working okay and what of yourself needs changing if you deny reality in Britain today for example the dry behind brexit involves massive denial of reality if you deny reality and you're not going to make progress towards solving the problem and wrecks it is an interesting example because some segments in those those portions of the United Kingdom with the fewest immigrants are the ones who are most upset about immigration but the numbers are that there are more more British people more British citizens living on the European continent than any other European country has citizens living in another European country and so if the British despite there being more British abroad than they are poles in Britain if the British nevertheless want brexit when there are so many British people in Spain and Ireland in the United States before a brexit what we need what the British should be asking for is not brexit but specks it with Spain and IREX it with Ireland and you sex it with the United States now so that I'm not leaving you having said we've got to keep those migrants from migrating dammit what would you suggest for that the the first world countries that would actually deal with this in a realistic way realistically the only long-term solution to the issue of immigration is to reduce these big differences in standards of living around the world and there are cheap ways to do that that rich countries are not pursuing for example one of the big things the economies of poor countries is their public health problems their short lifespans their high child mortality rates resulting in large family rates if in a country we have a life so you take a country we have a lifespan it's not 85 as in Japan or 81 is in the United States it's but it's 45 so you train an engineer and the engineer is out to practice engineering the age 30 and then on the average he or she is dead at age 45 so you get 15 years of productivity out of the engineer we was in the United States you get 4050 years of productivity out of the engineer the world's biggest killers the reasons for those short lifespans you know the number one killers around the world are AIDS malaria tuberculosis the estimates are that it would take something like 30 billion dollars maybe 30 billion a year to solve these biggest causes of short lifespans and hence poor economies in the developing world well the United States has lots of things to do with large multiples of 30 billion but the US government is not putting 30 billion into malaria control the Gates Foundation is but the Gates Foundation alone is not enough so the simplest thing that the United States could do for our own self-interests it's not to be nice to those poor people out there yes it is nice to the poor people out there but as selfishness on the part of the United States to cure one of the biggest threats to the stability of the world and of the United States name invest in public health for poor companies so that they have increased lifespans be richer and that will reduce the pressure pressure for immigration and will reduce the spread of disease I just came back from Italy and in Italy chikungunya fever from Uganda is now spreading to Italy because of climate change and globalization okay I mean yeah I mean it's it seems so the Marshall Plan was so successful I hold that over here on the other hand Americans have this wildly unrealistic idea of what we spend on foreign aid right then the Marshall Plan can be thought of as charity to other countries the United States adopted the Marshall Plan afterward not because we wanted to be nice and charitable it was selfish policy on the past part of the United States to strengthen Western European and other democracies for their good but also for our own good yeah we're gonna go to questions from the audience next the last question I want to ask in this section here is about California okay on many issues it seems to me we're years ahead of the rest of the country and I would put that not just in the good but we were ahead in the bad in 1994 we voted for 287 prop 287 which was anti-immigration you know harsher than most things that's going on nowadays and we faced our energy crisis 2000 2001 but somehow we've gotten to where we are now on the one hand we seem to be doing very well with climate zone and yet based on when you consider a cost of living where we leave the country in poverty talk a little bit about California in this you know in the sense of in the context of this book yes I'll be glad to talk about California particularly because I was born and brought up in Boston and I moved to California only at age 28 so Los Angeles is still a foreign land for me um nevertheless while you can point out negative things about California you can point out negative things about anybody my wife can point out negative things about me and vice versa nevertheless my wife and I are both wonderful people and as far as California is concerned yes you can point out some negative things about California but I still like California and I think California is a great state and of California we're independent would be the sixth richest country in the world there are some things that haven't done gone well in California but the fact is that California has the best system of university public education in the country and California is perhaps the most progressive state as far as environmental policy is concerned so while you can - one or two things about California I'm voting with my feet and I'm staying very good Ted questions from the audience if you have a question please raise your hand and we'll bring the microphone to you just a quick reminder questions around here start with a W or an H sometimes a D they are generally short there is no such thing as a two-part question and tonight only Terrance McNally gets to ask the follow-up questions so sorry if you ever addressed this but I wanted to know what is your opinion on the great man theory of history okay I'm going to rephrase it and I didn't hear that well but I think you said would he comment on the great man theory of history correct great I would love to comment on the great man theory theory of history which is one of the most interesting of fundamental debates about um history the question is do leaders really make a difference or all leaders reflections of their times and their circumstances this is a running debate among historians the opposite views are on the one hand the great man theory of history associated with Thomas Carlyle around 1820 who argued that history is the deeds of great men this was 1820 not great women but great men but an opposite view which is preferred by historians most historians today is that leaders seemingly independently acting leaders Churchill and Roosevelt really were strongly restricted in what they could do by their times so that leaders do not have a dominant force in world history this is a question which my shamelessly advertised book discusses briefly in the last chapter without finally resolving it it's something that because I developed my books by teaching the material to my UCLA undergraduates for four or five years before I write a book and I can see from the faces of my UCLA undergraduates whether they like the material and whether they understand it and it's better for me to get feedback from friendly people before a book is published then from enemies after a book is published next next winter I'll be teaching at you CLA to my undergraduates a course in the effect of leadership among nations and leadership in the business world and also leadership in the athletic world UCL a within the last year has fired its basketball coach and it's football coach but statistical now analyses show that teams that follow that fire their coaches don't do better in the next several years so casting some doubt on the role of leaders in the sports world very good you made this comparison that we have to acknowledge the truth before we can solve problems so can you comment on our current political climate in which we listen to lies every single day and how we overcome that as a people to get back to true telling' so that we can solve problems like in the United States for example that's what I was talking about so how do we solve the problems of the United States there's a really simple starting point and that is to vote alright so in the seriously in the United States theorists there are restrictions on voting many Americans are not able to register to vote but the shocking fact is that the voter turnout of Americans who do get registered to vote is the worst of any major democracy in Italy in every parliamentary election in every pleb asite since World War two the percentage of Italians voting has been between 85 and 93 percent the United States has never come close to that the highest voter turnout in modern American history was 61% for the presidential election of 2008 and to rub it in to all of us Los Angelenos in the most recent election for mayor of Los Angeles which after all is one of the most important civic positions in the United States the voter turnout was 20% and I just came from Dallas where the voter turnout for mayor of Dallas was 7% so how are we going to solve our problems a starting point is to vote because if we can't vote we don't deserve we deserve the bad government we're getting her question wasn't exactly that her question was you say that acknowledging the truth of the situation is an essential first step and we now in this country have lies running rampant every day how do we reverse that how do we cope with that how do we cope without again part of the reason part of the way to cope is voting because there are people who perceive correctly what the problems are the other the other part is to for those people who have some knowledge in the area to explain clearly to the general public and that's something that universities can do it's an area where universities around the United States have fallen down because in in academia there's a prejudice against academics who explain things in terms that the public can understand god help you if you are an assistant professor at UCLA and write a book for the public you'll never get tenure you'd better not write a book for the public until you've gotten tenure but there's a widespread scorn in academia for writing things in understandable terms rather than in academic jargon and there's there's a there's a jealousy and resistance to writing things in ways that the whole country can understand so another contribution to overcoming blindness overcoming denial of problems is for those people who understand academics who understand them to write about them and for other academics not to block their careers it's great to be here with you thank you in your list of the four things that are problematic I always look at what are the cures and it's been suggested that a wealth tax might make equality happen it's been suggested that a plant-based diet might help climate change what are some other things that can maybe give us hope that we could focus on in our own lives that are real solutions you get that she said she suggested some things that are solutions to the four problems you mentioned such as possibly a wealth tax deal with inequality a plant-based diet to deal with climate and so on what are some other solutions that I think you were saying that we could even deal with on an individual basis that you think could could reckon with those problems sure the solutions can be characterized as either top-down or bottom-up solutions there are things that only the government can do only the government could decide to ban lead in gasoline throughout the United States an individual at most could choose to use lead-free gasoline but could not change the whole country but there are things that that individuals can do what can individuals do you can go to PTA meetings of your schools you can vote for school taxes you can vote for carbon taxes you can vote against bad things so voting is part of it you can join your neighborhood councils for example in the area of LA where I live there is a Neighborhood Council and recently there was a big argument about parking on the streets turned out that a few people in the neighborhood were pushing their own selfish interests and it took a mobilization on the part of the neighborhood to get a sense for parking policy for the neighborhood so in short there were things that only government can do and you can influence that by voting and by telling ten of your friends to vote but there were also things that you can do to set a good example such as walking using bicycles buying cars with very good mileage per gallon so you can do things in your own life but you also vote for the government to do things at a large scale what was some of the government's large scale solutions or possible solutions to some of these problems of global global climate change political device Ernest what what what you might you suggest there large scale problems for the world large scale subbulu solutions large scale solutions to the world problem take climate change all of you know perfectly well what is the solution to climate change climate change is caused today overwhelmingly by the burning of fossil fuels in order to solve the problem of climate change we need to burn less fossil fuels and that consists of two steps one reducing our overall consumption of energy the United States's consumption of energy per person per year is high it's now double that of Western Europe and it's partly because we drive these these gas government guzzling cars it's partly because in Europe the government imposes taxes on buying cars that increases with the size of the car whereas in the United States Humvees I believe got less tax rather than more tax so that's that's then one thing reducing overall and reducing energy consumption the other part of it is getting more of our energy from sustainable sources and not from fossil fuels that's to say getting more of our energy from wind solar hydroelectric and tidal and yes all of these types of energy production have their problems windmills for example kill birds and bats and yes they do kill birds and bats but climate change kills far more birds and bats and if you're really concerned about the 42,000 birds per year that get killed by windmills around the United States reflect the average cap average outdoor cat kills 300 birds per year so those 42,000 birds per year killed by windmills are the work of about 166 cats if you get home 66 cats out of the neighborhood and you can double the number of windows and you shied away from that data analysis I don't twenty two years after a Guns Germs and Steel which ideas do you think of held up well and what would you update now I couldn't understand you 22 years after Guns Germs and Steel which ideas do you think have held up well and what would you update now oh I got it 22 years after Guns Germs and Steel which ideas have held up which merit re-examination all right you're going to hear the answer from a shameless author 22 years after I published guns German steel which of the basic ideas have held up and the answer is all of them have held up but because basically it was the right answer the reason for the difference Guns Germs and Steel my book is about the different outcomes of history over large areas for long time why is it that here today we are talking in the English language and we're not talking in Chumash nor Algonquin history played out differently for Native Americans from how it played out for Europeans and the reason I found in Gong German steel has nothing to do with Europeans and Native Americans and Africans as people it has everything to do with the environmental opportunities particularly the plants and animal species available for domestication in different parts of the world that doesn't mean that there's nothing to that we've learned nothing since Guns Germs seal 1998 yes we have learned things that have enriched the picture for example we have learned that that India was a minor but significant independent center of domestication and that wasn't clear in 1998 and we've learned that some of the major species like goats and pigs were domesticated independently in different parts of Eurasia and the evidence for that was not so good in 1998 but the the basic argument that the differences in history for different peoples over long term or do not to differences in people and particularly erotic use but instead due to differences in the environment that has not changed in the last 22 years and it's right shameless shameless I thank you for the talk so far I want to ask so in the case of personal crisis you've mentioned the importance of people not blaming others taking a certain degree of personal responsibility of thinking in some cases of people who are relatively powerless we might frame this as blaming the victim and in some sense I wonder what the analogy carries over to relatively powerless countries to what degree can they take responsibility and not blame others when maybe they are in fact being dominated by other countries good question is the key question I'm sure it's something that has bothered every one of us here the fact is that some of the bad stuff that happens to us is caused by other people the question is how are you going to react to it if when people are doing bad things to you say oh poor me I'm a victim self pity self pity you're gonna get nowhere towards dealing with it instead if there are bad people there the problem is for you what are you going to do about those bad people it's still ultimately your responsibility to deal with them and there are different ways of dealing with people who are causing you trouble but the important thing is not to get overwhelmed with self-pity but to figure out what you are going to do given those people out there and Terence you want to take the last sure sure um one thing that when I asked you at the start about the the the sort of the methodology of the book narrative comparative and so on narrative was the first thing and all your books that I've read are really strong on their it if you tell stories to to make your points and I'm gonna ask you about narrative this is a quote that I saw soon after the 2016 election by Antoine sanzu Perret if you want to build a ship don't drum up the men to gather wood divide the work and give orders instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea what is the compelling narrative that can drive Americans to yearn for a future richer than the past some of them want to go back to or fuel their emotions into yearning rather than fear great question in the in the past two weeks today is the last stop for me in a ten-city book publicity tour and I began in Boston we have my son math one ma two sons our son Max lives I had a free day in Boston I asked what would you like to do with Daddy on your free day max said that he wanted to see Concord and Lexington battlefields well I've grown up in Boston I've seen Concord and Lexington I didn't think that would do anything to me I went to Concord and elected I must say it was overwhelming I had a difficulty just keeping my cool seeing the battle it is so moving to see those battlefields this is where American independence began it's where some Americans got shot in order to got killed in order to fight their Liberty to fight for their liberty Concord and Lexington they're really moving but what is the what is our leader what's our president doing today is he going around and talking about the things of American history that bring us together and about which we can be proud no what I would see as the way that's going to get us out of our current problems will be stress and that means our leaders stressing the things of which Americans can be proud and that bring us together not the various identity issues that divide us but if we had a president who on April 18th would go to Concord adil field and talk about what Concord meant or my third stop was Rochester New York the Erie Canal if we had a president who would go to the Erie Canal on the anniversary of its opening and talk about the Erie Canal and its role in opening the center of the United States to the coast if we had a president of who would go to Ellis Island and talk about the significance of Ellis Island if we had a leader who would stress the things that unify us Americans and of which we can be proud rather than blaming other countries for things that are really our responsibility if we stress the positive and the unifying that seems to me the necessary thing and the only thing that's going to get us out of our present mess [Applause]

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 540

Rating: 4.3846154 out of 5

Keywords: Jared Diamond, Terrence McNally, Guns Germs Steel, Live Talks Los Angeles

Id: 2uAJXaIdei8

Length: 59min 44sec (3584 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020