Tuesday, July 30, 2019
Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?
ââ¬Å"How on earth could a society make such an obviously disastrous decisions as to cut down all the trees on which it depended? â⬠was the question that started Jared Diamonds urge to do further research on societal collapses (392). His urge to write about this topic resulted from a conversation he had about the collapse of Easter Island society. In this piece of Diamonds ââ¬Å"Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions,â⬠he discusses past and present societies that have fallen due to their inability to handle oncoming disasters. In general, Diamonds target audience is societies. He uses various strategies to draw the readerââ¬â¢s attention, in hopes to warn and get enough information across for some motivation (393). After being astonished by our societal blindness today, Diamond has proposed different decision-making errors contributing to various societal collapses. Jared Diamond starts off by describing himself as a teacher for the University of California at Los Angeles who, alike his students, is ââ¬Å"highly motivatedâ⬠and ââ¬Å"open-mindedâ⬠(392). He uses these words in attempt to establish credibility from the reader. Next he draws the readerââ¬â¢s attention in by targeting our concerns using diction. Diamond repeats the questions that his students wondered about after learning about the collapse of Easter Islandââ¬â¢s society, ââ¬Å"How often did people wreak ecological damage intentionally, or at least while aware of the likely consequences? â⬠ââ¬Å"How often did people instead do it without meaning to, or out of ignorance? and ââ¬Å"If there are still people left alive a hundred years from nowââ¬âthose people of the next century will be as astonished about our blindness today as we are about the blindness of the Easter Islandersâ⬠(392). As you can see, he uses phrases such as ââ¬Å"wreak ecological damageâ⬠, ââ¬Å"aware of the likely consequences? â⬠ââ¬Å"Out of ignoranceâ⬠, and ââ¬Å"astonished about our blindnessâ⬠to create diction in attempt to draw attention and concer n (Diamond 392).
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