The Story Paradox - Jonathan Gottschall Audiobook

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• 
  apnea
  June 9th, 2022
  

  

  This is one of a growing number of “Hail Mary” books by writers/humans who can no longer maintain denial (of collapse), so have switched to magical thinking to deal. There’s even more when it comes to techno climate saves. It’s not gonna happen kids.

  The only civilization I know of that sort of saved themselves from collapse is the Eastern Roman empire in the 7th century. Weakened from eternally fighting the Persians they almost were done for by the Muslim explosion, but they tightened their belts big time for a long time and eventually recovered for a time. That’s not typical of most collapses as Arnold Toynbee has noted,
  “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”.
  The man also said, “Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now.”

  I’ve read almost every serious book on collapse. A few of them can be found here in audio format, but two of the best ones overall & are not available in audio format, to the best of my knowledge, are Joseph Tainter’s ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’ & ‘Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail’ by William Ophuls. Here you will find a few ebook versions, gratis - https://b-ok.cc/s/?q=++Immoderate+Greatness+Why+Civilizations+Fail+

  Copies of Tainter’s ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’ can be found in PDF with a google search.

  I really liked Gottschall’s other book on the power of stories. They are indeed powerful, just not ‘get out of collapse free’ powerful.

  Funny, in a way Gibbon blamed a story for the collapse of the Roman empire. Y’all know that story, it’s the greatest fairy tale ever told.

  A couple by Historian Kyle Harper are very good - ‘The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire’ (2017) & ‘Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History’ (2021) both available on this site courtesy of our many secret friends :)

  The Story Paradox - Jonathan Gottschall
• 
  Thamus
  June 9th, 2022
  

  The Story Paradox… just another story to add to the pile of “dangerous storytelling”.

  The Story Paradox - Jonathan Gottschall
• 
  caesar963
  June 9th, 2022
  

  

  “How can we save the world from stories?” Er, by telling more positive stories?

  As to “The only civilization I know of that sort of saved themselves from collapse is the Eastern Roman empire” - Yeah, I think every civilisation that confronts existential crisis & then adapts to it, by definition saves itself from collapse (plague, military defeat, environmental disaster, famine, internal turbulence, factionalising, population collapse).

  The “fall” of the Western half of the Roman empire was due to population decline, in the first inst (from the 2nd century AD Antonine Plague onwards - it adapted & thereby saved itself for a time, see?); and more effective barbarian invasions (constantly hiring one tranche of barbarians to fight another, because there were no longer enough soldiers within the empire; then switching barbarian horses once one’s “ally” got too strong - this was only a delaying action).

  Gibbon’s error (really, he knew better, y’all) - the “fall” was due to Christianity rendering the Romans too compassionate to be militarily effective. The clear refutation here: the continued survival & prosperity of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern half was far more Christian than the West (4 of the 5 patriarchates were in the East: Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, & Jerusalem); the East was also more developed, more urban & wealthier.

  The Story Paradox - Jonathan Gottschall

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