View source for Talk:Civilization Systems Engineering

One bit i saw skimming, “ Guns, Germs, and Steel — Jared Diamond” that book ignores the role that getting rival tribes to attack the main one, [[Divide and Rule]] and all that played.

While technology, and mass die offs due to disease DEFINITELY PLAYED A ROLE, especially in Tropical Disease ridded areas, and heavy forests/swamps/mountainous regions (where “conventional warfare” that does great in plains/deserts) there wasn’t some “silver bullet” for getting past that + the defender’s advantage etc

It’s a whole rant, i’ll dig for a good videoessay/writeup etc, but all i remember is my Anthropologist background sister had a rant on all that, then i did a BIT of digging (although Mesoamerican History is HUGE so i have barely scratched the surface, but yeah)  and yeah.

The other aspects of this page are fine and whatnot, but short of maybe if read very critically (ie not “this is heretical BURN DA BOOK” which in jo way i mean, but “this is one position to look at this issue, but it is a bit lacking and your goal tonight is to read up on that”; although I concede that may not be the most efficient way of going about teaching stuff.



In terms of not bringing up problems without solutions, i think teaching why societies fail/empires fail, how to prevent that, and [[Scarcity]] / Imperialism+Fascism / “ [[Nature Abhors a Vacuum, People Abhor Oppression]] ” ,  Ecological Services + fucking over the environment being a role etc.  i think teaching that angle may be a bit productive than history as a whole.  History is definitely important, but the “applied why” boils down to that for the most part.

I’ll refine this sometime later, but yeah just figured i’d raise that concern/bit of info,  thanks!

--[[User:Eric|Eric]] ([[User talk:Eric|talk]]) 01:11, 12 January 2026 (UTC)