Malcolm Gladwell reviews “Collapsed” by Jared Diamond

My favorite author reviews one of my favorite book.

n “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Diamond looked at environmental and structural factors to explain why Western societies came to dominate the world. In “Collapse,” he continues that approach, only this time he looks at history’s losers—like the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi of the American Southwest, the Mayans, and the modern-day Rwandans. We live in an era preoccupied with the way that ideology and culture and politics and economics help shape the course of history. But Diamond isn’t particularly interested in any of those things—or, at least, he’s interested in them only insofar as they bear on what to him is the far more important question, which is a society’s relationship to its climate and geography and resources and neighbors. “Collapse” is a book about the most prosaic elements of the earth’s ecosystem—soil, trees, and water—because societies fail, in Diamond’s view, when they mismanage those environmental factors.

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Spain: Barcelona

Barcelona

The airport bus Girona-Barcelona operates from Nord station, a metro stop away from the center Catalunya.  It should have been an easy walk, but I am here for the first time, carrying a knapsack on my back thus in no mood for exploring, so I choose the easier way by crossing the street to the metro station heading for Catalunya.  No wonder Spaniards and Catalans are know for their relaxed and easy temperament.  Where else in a late winter evening, flocks of people can still on benches, watching flocks of other people walking. I want to have my first share of the Mediterranean air, sitting on a street bench to munch on my cookies but there is not a single space left for me.

The guidebook recommends a walk up and down the La Rambla which is only a couple of blocks away.  Finishing the cookie and spotting the sign to La Rambla, I fixed up my backpack and handbag to prepare for my walkabout.  Though other than walking and soaking in the spirit, there is not so much to see.  One peculiarity which sets this tourist street from others in Europe is the presence of many stands offerring birds, chicken, rabbits, hamsters and other pets. “What a sight!” It is a bit out of place but it is fun to watch.

Further down the La Rambla stands the colorful La Boqueria market. Spaniards enjoy pigs in an extravagant way as gigantic legs of ham are  on display everywhere, which I will soon find in every shops and bars across the country. Then there is seafood. Whoa! FOP (fresh of the plane) from the landlocked Czech Republic, where pork, chicken and beef are the major protein source of my daily meal, I can not help but stare with admiration at at shrimps, lobsters and their extended family competting for sellers’ attention with their bright and various shades of pink and orange.   Arm-spreading white octopus lie next to neighbor squids and strange-looking scarry fish I’ve never seen anywhere. Lovely but unfortunately dead rabbits hung up-side-down along side with bags of snails and fowls. It might seem weird and rude to enjoy oneself by the sight of dead animals, but I have never seen such “deadly” combination before. For years, the only hanging meat I saw were roasted chicken, ducks and pork mostly in China town and restaurants. Later on I saw skinned calves haging dry on dirty streets in Dominican Republic, but the dirty meet and dirty road only made me wanted to throw up.  Here, arrangement of the rabbits, the snails and the wild birds poses a strange beauty even in their death.

Too child-unfriendly? No if you take them to sweet delight sections which boasts  everything from chocolate, gummies, and candies of all kinds. I personally don’t like sweet which explains why I don’t bankcrupt in this market.  But I have never imagined sweet sight-shopping can be this fun and refreshing.

Spaniards, or in this case Catalans, know how to enjoy themselves!

Walking off the market, I bumped into an Italian man who asks me for direction.  Realizing that I am also a dumb dove as he is, he hastens off for a waiter preparing a table a few feet a way. Five minutes later, he walked back toward me telling me he knows how to get to there.  Since he continues talking to me, I followed him to the building where Gaudi first worked and Gaudi styled  lamp.  I don’t usually follow the first stranger I meet in a foreign place, but he is an art professor from Milan who recently transferred to teach here in Barcelona.  What more can I ask for? Who will give away a free art lecture from the master.  We continue to a local tapas bar where he order small portion of anchovy stuffed Reina olives and thin slices of pickled herring.  I can not believe my luck of meeting a knowledgeable travel partner on the very first day until the “charming” Italian professor demonstrates a “tradition” in southern Italy.  “We cheer by touching the glasses twice, on the top and the bottom.”  Then he raises his wine glass to touch mine “One, two…” he counts and then in the middle of the bar under the scrutiny of the Spaniards around, “and three,” he kisses me on the cheek.  “It’s our tradition in the south.”
Huh? It has been a long time since I first traveled solo, thus never fully prepared for this kind of being hit on this blatantly.

Gaudi

Followed the advise of my host E., I make a visit to Parc Guel the next morning.  E. lives in between the green Fontana and yellow Joanic metro stops, north of the city center. So walking to Parc Guel is a short fifteen minute walk to the main street and then up the hill. I didn’t know about Gaudi nor saw any of his work so I have no expectation of what I am about to see.  Once again, my jaws drop as I reach the end of the street and turn the corner to behold the entrance of the park.  I had never seen any architecture this elegant and original like that of Gaudi.  This is not to debase the beauty of Europe’s typical Gothic, Renaissance or Baroque. However the latter’s almost ubiquitious presence in every old town in big and small cities across Europe somehow diminishes their appeal to me.  When I first set foot in Europe and a couple of years after that, one gaze at any even commonplace buildings was enough to stop me from my track, force me to take out my camera an start to photo like a Japanese tourist.  But then my eyes got used to the familiarity of Gothic rose windows, pointed arches, tall spires to Baroque domes, abundant use of ornaments, and I stopped seeing.

So one hand holding the map, the other carrying the camera ready for action, I walk down Carrer de Padilla searching for Gaudi’s most impressve work, the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi has worked on this grand project for over 40 years until his death.  Coninuance of his work has been carried on after his death and scheuled to finish in another fifteen years or so.  This proves how grand this project is.

And then it happens.  As I squat on the ground trying to capture the immense height of the church, a small gypsy comes up and shows me a petition paper for rights of gypsies with two names from New Yorka and London. She says something like “your name here.”  Feeling good, I take out my pen and write down my name. Then just like magic, she removes her fingers to reveal the last column showing the money contributed (10 and 20 EUR) and asks “How much?” A ha! Now I start looking closely at the paper and discover the names are printed and not hand-writtened.  I have been axed. I can’t just shoo a little girl away so I give her 2 EUR.  A bunch of other gypsies then surround me and shove the same piece of paper into my face when I hear a shout from a man behind me. He keeps on shouting at them and signals “No”  and “gypsies steal” to me.

Suddenly it dawns on me. Not the kind of revelation that one has finally acknowledged God. Well, I should anyway given that he maybe sits somewhere across the street.  Rather It was an understanding about human motivation. It becames clear to me why us adults get more doutbful, we are on the look out all the time and trust others less. Because, as it is proved in my enounter with the young gypsy, the moment I get comfortable and doubt nothing, I am dubbed.

Park Guel                                                           Paneira

Sagrada Familia Casa de Bastilo