📚 Want to read: Goliath’s Curse by Luke Kemp.

The usual cheery reading.

Luke Kemp surveys the history of the fall of yesterday’s ‘great civilisations’ (not that I think he’d call them that) in order to find the patterns in why they are no longer with us.

America or Tiwanaku in South America, or the sprawling empires of Egypt, Rome and China, it was increasing inequality and concentrations of power that hollowed these Goliaths out before an external shock brought them crashing down.

And whether it always led to catastrophe:

These collapses were written up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most of the population.

And, naturally, what it means for us living in today’s world:

Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible.

Good to know!

Let’s hope there are some concrete ideas herein to save us from ourselves. After all:

All of us now face a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.

I first heard of the book from this newspaper article which covers some of the author’s theories and thoughts.