Posted on February 2, 2009

Collapse
Jared Diamond's fabulous book Collapse, looks at why some societies collapsed in the past because of injudicious use of their resources. He talks about the Nordic Greenlanders who spent most of their export income on fancy imported European materials for their churches, and much of their local resources on raising beef, rather than learning to eat local foods like the Inuit. This is what finally did it for them, when their connections by boat with Europe were disrupted, although in the meantime it probably kept them going as a community for about 500 years.

Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers says that what makes a "genius" like Bill Gates or the Beatles is not superior DNA or raw talent, but the right opportunity to clock in 10,000 hours of experience, prior to their world debut. He speaks of communities based on rice agriculture, like China, where there is a culturally-driven imperative even now in urban environments to put in the slog work regularly over the year, so kids reach their 10,000 hours early.

That made me think, how do the choices in a society to invest in arts and culture activities pay off (or not pay off) over time? Clearly, it helped the Nordic Greenlanders survive for 500 years, although not longer, as other conditions changed. How does a society direct people into spending that first 10,000 hours on one thing rather than another? What effect has this had on our ability to guarantee food sustainability in the face of climate change? How can arts and culture investments (of time and money) help to mitigate social collapse?