First-Year Seminar: Past Tense, Future Imperfect: The Rise & Fall of Societies & Global Civilization

3 units

The past history of humanity is littered with the stories of societies whose peoples experienced prosperity and fluorescence followed by decline and catastrophe. In the present, an age of information and rapid change, public intellectuals offer broad and detailed visions of what took place in the past, what is happening now, and what the trends suggest for the future. This course looks at the efforts of two prominent public intellectuals, economist Lester Brown and geographer Jared Diamond. In this course we look at Brown's work in its latest incarnation, Plan B 4.0. We discuss this in light of current events. We then look at Jared Diamond's book Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and critical response to that book by experts. I include a personal perspective as an archaeologist working with the ancient Maya civilization. The Maya are famous for the ninth century AD collapse of their Classic civilization. The readings provide the basis for discussion of the challenges we face in understanding the life histories of societies and discerning what we can conclude about the future from their experiences. This course is available to first year non-transfer students only.