"Upheaval" study guide.
This is a short discussion guide for Jared Dianomd's book (2019) "Upheaval") and how it pertains to the present crises in the United States.
Who is Jared Diamond and what has he written?
Jared (84 years old in 2026) is a brilliant historian who stated out as a biologist, who picks up languages (7+) like I like to read books, including Finnish (probably the hardest language to learn on this earth.)
He was top of his class at Harvard, got a PhD from Cambridge and is now a Professor at UCLA. He's published several best sellers related to History on a grand scale. I first learned about him by reading his book "The Third Chimpanzee" (1992) about the evolution of humans. Why are we different, a fascinating book.
"Why is Sex Fun?" (1997) basically these first two books are Jared's attempt to compliment Darwin, the first about Evolution by Natural Selection, the second about Sexual Selection.
Also in 1997 he published his most famous book: "Guns, Germs and Steel" which explained the last 500 years of human history as due to geography, population density and technology. A fascinating take on what actually causes history.
He published "Collapse" in 2005. It's about how climate change and devastation has occurred many times for many civilizations and there are definitely lessons to be learned from these failed ancient civilizations and applied to the current state of the world.
In 2010 he published "Natural Experiments of History" which I haven't read, but I'm pretty sure he explains how to use science: theory, experiment, predictions, error feedback loop where you can't control the experiment, but just have to observe it. An extremely fascinating topic. It's definitely on my lists of books to read this summer.
In 2012 he published "The World until Yesterday", which I also haven't read but is about what we can learn from ancient civilizations and traditional societies.
In 2019 He published "Upheaval". Jared is extremely worried about where America is heading. He raises the alarm halfway through Trump's first term. It spent six years working on this book and it picked out the issues that Trump surfed to power and explains the underlying causes and recommendations of how to reduce the suffering and increase the well being of peole by taking lessons from other crisis in other nations.
He's next book is due out in (2025) and is called "Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: Do Leaders Matter? When and Why.)". It's scheduled to be published on September 1st, and it's on my list to read immediately. He foreshadows the book in "Upheaval" that we are discussing today.
His books almost always are motivated by personal experience, in the case of "Upheaval", his wife was a psychologist in the 60's and helped to develop the protocol for dealing with intense trauma. How can we help people recover from crises? They happened to be living near the "Cocoanut Grove" night club when it burned down and killed almost 500 people. For "Upheaval" he takes the lessons learned on how to deal with personal crisis and adapts them to apply to nations in crises. These protocols have been tested and proved to help individuals, he explores how they can be used with nations. This is his distillation of the protocol for nations.
What are the top dozen factors that affect a nation's crisis' depth, length, savageness, misery, democracy, economy and liberty?
- National Consensus that one's nation is in a crisis.
- Acceptance of National Responsibility to do something.
- Building a Fence around the national problems needing to be solved.
- Getting Material and Financial Help from other Nations.
- Using Other Nations as Models of how to solve problems..
- National Identity (What's not up for discussion, what we all agree on.)
- Honest National Self-appraisal.
- Historic Experience of Previous National Crises.
- Dealing with Previous National Failures.
- Situation Specific National Flexibility.
- National Core Values.
- Freedom from Geopolitical Constraints.
He applies this framework to the United States (of 2019)
Strengths
- Wealth
- Geography
- Democracy
- Polarization (Most impactful)
- Elections: voter registrations and gerrymandering
- Inequality and social mobility
- Decreasing investment by government in the future
Each of these topics can be seen through the lens of the dozen factors of national crises listed above.
There are three kinds of national crises:
- Invasions (Finalnd by Russia, Japan by the west)
- Coups (Chile (1972) and Indonesia (1962)
- Gradual decay (Germany reunification and Australia's split from England)
The last one is us. Let's hope we don't move into one of the other types...
United State's Crises in the past
The US has been in a serious crisis about every fifty to a hundred years (typical for national crises):
- The American Revolution
- The Civil War
- The Gilded Age, the Progressive Era and the Great Depression
- WWII
- Cold War
- Globalization
What is our current crisis?
This is not the first time that Fascism has reared it's ugly head and cropped up to hijack a Democracy. It seems that every time that there is a new media, Fascism attempts to use a new form of propaganda and the same old threat of violence to gain control. We can learn how to stop this by extrapolating from previous crisis.
How can we use this framework?
Which factors can minimize the crisis affect on the nation?[1]
- Decrease the crisis' length
- Decrease crisis' savageness
- Increase Democracy
- Decrease Misery
- Increase Economy and Well being
Here are the questions we will want to answer:
- Why is this a crisis now?
- What caused it?
- What help do we have?
- What can you do?
- What can you change?
- What can't you change?
- What must you change?
- How do you make change happen?
National Issues: Things to think about.
- National politics and economics
- China
- Leader's role
- Questions about group decisions
- Changes through peaceful resolution or violent revolution
- All at once or piecemeal
- Internal or external causes
- Achieving reconciliation
Why is this crisis acute? Why now? [2}
- Trump's capture of the Republican party
- Trump's autocratic tendencies to implement Fascism
What is happening?
- Blatant corruption
- Manipulation of voter registration and certification
- Stacking of the courts
- Using "law enforcement" to suppress political opposition
- Media censorship
- Monopolies and enshittification
- Increasing inequality [3]
- Increasing partisanship in politics
- Increasing isolation and partisanship in society
Plan for discussion
Strengths
Weaknesses
Factors to Successfully Navigate a Crisis
#1 Acknowledge We Are In a Crisis
- Denial
- Acknowledgement of only part of the crisis
- Downplay its seriousness
Undeniable triggers for an acute crisis would be:
- Collapse of Democracy (2020, mid-terms, 2028)
- WWIII (China blockades Taiwan)
- Civil War or Constitutional Convention
How can we ignore the following?
- Political polarization
- Low voter turnout
- Obstacles to voter registration and gerrymandering
- Increasing inequality and limited socio-economic mobility
- Decreasing support of public infrastructure and education
#2 Accept Responsibility
- Avoid claiming victimization
- Self pity
- Blaming Others
Detailed denials
- Both parties claim to be the victim
- Much whining and complaining
- Blame everyone but ourselves
- China
- Immigrants
- Minorities
- Technology
- Politicians
- Each other
- Pre-surrendering of businesses and media denies the crisis
#3 Build Fences: Selective Change
Change or Fix
- Polarization
- Meet your neighbors
- Control you news bubbles and social media
- Civic participation
- Democracy
- Voting Rights Act
- Civil Rights Act
- Inequality of representation
- Corruption
- Free speech
- Sound bytes
- Propaganda
- Censor ship
- Infrastructure investment
- Public transportation
- Public education
- Universal Healthcare
- Technology and Research
- Environmental protection
- Inequaity
- Redistribution of wealth
- Public service
- Selfishness, empathy, compassion
What to keep
- Rule of law
- Democracy
- Identity
- American Dream
- Economic engine
- Technology/Science/Education
#4 Help from Other Nations
Accept Help
- International voting audits and observations (EU)
- Immigration (Canada)
- Race relations (South Africa)
- Government modifications and restructuring (EU)
- International Criminal Court
- Social Media (Australia/France)
- Drones (Ukraine)
- Chip manufacturing (Taiwan)
- Solar and Batteries (China)
- Bullet Trains (China)
- Public Transportation (EU)
Work with others
- NATO/SEATO/Miliitary entanglement
- Paris agreements
- UN and other collective actions
- Free trade and capital
- Free passage of the seas
- Economic forums
Return the Favor
- Humanitarian aid
- Military aid
- Enforce international law
- Share Science and technology
#5 Use Other Nations as Models
- Healthcare (Canada)
- Education (Japan)
- Childcare (France)
- Public Investment (China)
- Voter Registration (Australia/EU)
- Misogyny (Sweden)
- Immigration (Canada)
- Social Mobility (EU)
- Inequality (Nordic countries/EU)
- Arts/Society (EU)
- Democracy/Government (UK)
- Military Drones (Ukraine)
- Race Relations (South Africa)
- Social Media (Austrailia/EU)
- Economics/Regulation (EU)
- Life/Work balance (EU)
#6 National Identity
Shared pride in admirable things that characterize one's nation and make it unique.
- American Dream
- MAGA/antifa: subgenre identity is transcendent, not national identity
- Example: Lewis & Clarke are celebrated as opening up the west
- versus not the killing and displacement of Indians and enslavement of African.
- Flawed Democracy
- New Deal in response to the Great Depression and the Gilded Age
- Blood for Freedom
- Opportunity
- All men are created equal (all humans)
- Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness
#7 Honest Self-Appraisal
No self -deception, evaluate knowledge honestly.
Our leader isn't honest and lies about reality. And many in this historically gullible nation celebrate this.
We don't take our current problems seriously.
Blaming other countries rather than ourselves.
Skepticism about science is increasingly wide spread in the US (positive still at 70%)
The rich must realize they don't have to be so selfish (to the end result of their ruin.)
Monopolies need customers (You can only enshittify yourself so far before collapse.)
Republicans aren't stopping them, rather they are disbanding Congress.
Corruption is in the open and celebrated (for spite?)
DJT crypto company built for bribes
Gifted $1B jet from Qatar
Insider trading
Bribes for pardons
Ignoring the Rule of Law blatantly in public
Impoundment
Pardoning Criminals for bribes
1776 Fund stolen from the government to finance a militia
Cuba blockade, Iran war
Blatant war crimes on the open seas (over 100 boats sunk, over 150 people killed)
Ignoring War Powers Act
Weaponization of the DOJ
#8 Historical Experience of Previous National Crisis
What have we learned? What do we ignore?
- Second Gilded Age
- Second (actually third) Great Depression
- WWIII
#9 Patience With National Failure
History of crises
How do we stop it?
- Win midterms
- Peaceful protest
- Impeachment/conviction
- Reform Government
- Reconciliation
#10 Situation Specific National Flexibility
Increasing Refusal to Compromise
#11 National core Values
#12 Freedom From Geopolitical Constraints
The US has been outstandingly unconstrained (like Rome)
- Two oceans
- Large borders with unthreatening neighbors
- Large fertile land able to feed itself
- Energy Independent
- Large population
- Immense Wealth
Free to do as it pleases
Constraints
- Major exporter and importer
- Chip manufacturing
- Phones/Computers/Solar
- Manufacturing of Consumer Goods
- Rare Earths
- Other Physical Constraints
- Immigration
- Trade Wars
- Real wars
- Inflation
- Disease/Plagues
- Investments
- Brain Drain
- Debt
Summary Questions
- Invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 devolves into a decades long occupation
- Korea, Vietnam
- Response to Iraq WMDs and invasion of Bahrain
- Panama Canal, Venezuela
- Cuba, Iran
Do Leaders Make a Difference? [5]
Do they screw themselves and their countries?
- Hitler
- Benito Mussolini
- Mao
- Frederick The Great
- King Leoplold
- Lenin/Stalin
- Vladimir Putin
- Cornwell
- Sukharno
- Pol Pot
- Idi Amin
- Ferdinand Marcos
- Francois Duvalier
- Muammar Khadaffi
- Robert Mugabe
- Bashar Al Assad
- Kim Jong Un
- Augusto Pinochet
- Syngman Rhee (1948-1960), Park Chung-hee (1961-1979), Chun Doo-hwan (1961-1979)
Or do they help their country?
- George Washingoton
- Churchill
- Lincoln
- FDR
- Johnson
- Nelson Mandela
- Adolfo Suarez
- Seretse Khama
- Raul Alfonsin
- Patricia Aylwin
- Mikhail Gorbachev
- Lee Teng-hui
- Kin Dae Jung
- Vaclav Havel
- Arpad Goncz
- Corazon Acquino
- Olusegun Obasanjo
- Boris Trajkovski
- Tunku Abdul Rahman
- Jambyn Batmonkh (1984-1990), Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat (1990-1997)
- King Juan Carlos
- Lech Walesa
- Ricardo Lagos
- Ernesto Dedillo
- Alaksandr Kwasniewski
[1] I feel like Hari Seldon from the "Foundation Series" by Isaac Asimov. Reduce the coming dark ages...
[2] In 2019, Jared Diamond wrote, "The US is not experiencing an acute crisis comparable to that of Japan following Perry's appearance in 1853." I don't think he believes that anymore.
[3] In 2019, Jared Diamond wrote, "Inequality is fixed when the rich fear for their safety."
[4] George Lakoff: "The Left, the Right and Family Values".
Conflict over Nation as Family:
- Strict Father Family or
- Nurturing Mother Family
[5] See Jared Diamond's upcoming book: "Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings" due out in September 2026 for an interesting perspective
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