| The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization |  | Author: Thomas Homer-Dixon
Publisher: Island Press
Category: Book
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Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 153,821
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1597260657
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.927
EAN: 9781597260657
ASIN: 1597260657
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
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Product Description
Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon - or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and planet earth.
The Upside of Down takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies' management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this spellbinding book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls "synchronous failure." But, crisis doesn't have to mean total global calamity. Through catagenesis, or creative, bold reform in the wake of breakdown, it is possible to reinvent our future.
Drawing on the worlds of archeology, poetry, politics, science, and economics, The Upside of Down is certain to provoke controversy and stir imaginations across the globe. The author's wide-ranging expertise makes his insights and proposals particularly acute, as people of all nations try to grapple with how we can survive tomorrow's inevitable shocks to our global system. There is no guarantee of success, but there are ways to begin thinking about a better world, and The Upside of Down is the ideal place to start thinking.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
 Outstanding book January 1, 2007
Gail Fleeton (Cambridge, MA)
33 out of 34 found this review helpful
This is an absolutely outstanding book - passionate, original, and easily accessible. It's far better than Homer-Dixon's The Ingenuity Gap, which was in itself groundbreaking. Homer-Dixon has a striking ability to bring together diverse ideas and research into one larger and compelling theme. He is also one of the few people in the world who really grasps the complexities and dangers of the human predicament in its totality. Many readers won't like this book's argument - that some form of crisis in the future is now extremely likely, that we'd best get ready for it, and that (if we're lucky) it might ultimately produce some good - but after finishing this book I find these conclusions inescapable and largely correct.
The book is rich with new ideas, on practically every page. I do wish the author had given us more on how "open-source" architectures on the Internet could be the basis for new forms of democracy, and for mobilization of non-extremists, but clearly he's just beginning to work through these ideas.
If you want to know about the role of energy scarcity in the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the sources of modern capitalism's unchallengeable obsession with economic growth, the causes of people's widespread denial of our global crisis, the relationship between rising complexity and social breakdown, or the real story on global income inequality - the list of subjects covered goes on and on - this book is unmatched. But don't expect that it won't challenge some of your preconceptions. The book is definitely not for intellectual sissies, nor for people whose minds are already made up.
Reflecting in the fog August 24, 2007
Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
The key question in this book is raised in the very middle: "Why don't we face reality?" A major reason is that we are groping in a fog to learn what that reality is. Homer-Dixon likens our society to a driver careering along a country road in a dense fog. We can barely see what's ahead, but we're somehow confident that no mishap will befall us. We've gotten this far safely. As we drive, we're guided by the mantra of "endless economic growth". We have some idea where we've been, but remain uncertain about what lies ahead. Worse, we don't seem to care. Ignoring the warning signs indicating that all might not be well we continue along our course. In this excellent study of how our society is progressing and where it's likely going, the author clearly outlines the various options before us and what actions we can take to prevent serious disruptions.
The book is a call for preparation. Resilience is what our outlook and our policies should undertake to prevent disasters that we cannot handle. Having observed and reflected on these issues for several years, Homer-Dixon concludes that major difficulties lie ahead. We cannot avoid them - they're already here or loom in the near future. He lists some of the obvious ones: terrorism is now a part of life, climate change beyond our experience is already with us, and economic and social disruption causes have already been pinpointed. His model used as the basis of assessment is the Roman Empire. He cites three examples of what the Empire accomplished, the Colosseum, the road and aqueduct networks and the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek, Lebanon. All these enterprises required immense amounts of energy, yet a society without engineering schools achieved them all successfully. It worked only so long as the energy was available and applied efficiently. Our schools taught us that the Romans built their imperium on slavery, but Homer-Dixon shows that concept to be false. Oxen pulled the 256 carts of material required by the Colosseum and free peasant farmers supplied the basic energy needs. The Empire collapsed only when the energy required failed. We need to understand what can be learned from that Empire offer, and Homer-Dixon demonstrates how pertinent the lessons are today.
The author's formula for assessment is EROI - Energy Return On Investment. We've been profligate in energy use, and it's future availability is a major concern of the his. "Peak oil" has been the topic of so many books and articles, it should be old news. The author notes how the petroleum industry and those dependent on it keep up a continuous barrage of denial propaganda to discourage us from believing that evident fact. The "globalised" economy was supposed to reduce the distinction between rich and poor. Not only is it having the opposite effect, but it's increasing the consumption of energy in the process. While a number of recent books stress the threats posed by environmental change, Homer-Dixon sees that as but one element in a far larger picture. He deals with a full range of pressures building up to threaten society. He likens them to tectonic stresses likely to snap unexpectedly at any time.
Unlike some books making forecasts or offering timetables of potential catastrophe, Homer-Dixon's more circumspect. He's more concerned with demonstrating that the kinds of "growth" we've experienced cannot endure. What and when surprise setbacks occur is of less importance to him than how we adjust to them. He's not addressing a small coterie of "movers and shakers" with this work His prose style is just short of that of a story-telling narrative. He means for all of us, taxpayers, policy-makers and even academics and scientists, to participate in the development and preparation of new sets of options for survival. We will all be effected by the unfolding events. While this may seem that the author's "Down" is inevitable and final, he prefixed it with "Upside" for a reason. His opening depicts the destruction of a city - San Francisco in the 1906 earthquake and fire. The city didn't collapse and die, but recovery meant a new approach to disaster planning. We must follow that example, or our collapse will be more severe. It will be global and possibly all-consuming. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Worrying Efficiently February 7, 2007
Barbara B. Torrey (Washington D.C.)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is Tad Homer-Dixon's second book in the last five years that takes a sweeping view of history to provide context to current problems. He sorts through today's headlines to identify trends we should worry about. He uses history, science and public policy to identify trends that are important and the options for addressing them. His first book left the reader with a clearer definition of the problems than of the solutions. The Upside of Down has a much more inventive conclusion i.e. in our problems and their consequences may lie the seeds of regeneration. But we must be smart enough to learn from our collective mistakes. We are smart enough; the human species is so adaptable. But the underlying question in this book is "will we?" We're good at adapting at small scales over time; can we do it over much larger scales in shorter amounts of time?
Homer-Dixon has an unsettling thesis written in a mellofiluous style. He is a pleasure to read, even when the subject is daunting. The reward for reading this book carefully is that it helps us worry more efficiently about the future with a dollop of hope that worrying well can make a difference.
Spectacular Synthesis, Signals Emergence of Collective Intelligence February 25, 2008
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I learned a great deal more about this author when two chapters in a book I just published, Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace featured his thinking: an interview of him by Hassan Masum; and his interview of the Rt Hon Paul Martin on the important topic of the Internet and democracy.
Consequently, I may place more value on this book than some of the other reviewers, but I choose to give it a solid five stars. In combination with his earlier book The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable Future, and the work of many, many people on emergent collective, peace, commercial, gift, cultural, and earth intelligence, all subsets of the emerging discipline of public intellligence (self-governance founded on full access to all information to produce reality-based balanced budgets), I regard the author as one of a handful of individuals exploring the possibilities of cognitive collective integral consciousness.
I have a note: superb single best overview. I cannot list all the books I would like, being limited to ten links, the ones I do are a token. See my 1100+ other reviews and my many lists for a more comprehensive stroll through the relevant literatures.
Highlights from my notes:
+ Five stresses (population, energy, environmental, climate, economic)
+ I have a note, what about mental, cultural, physical stress (e.g. dramatic increases in mental illness, blind fundamentalism, and obesity).
+ See the image on predicting revolution, the author observes that revolutions come from synchronous failures with negative synergy.
+ Connectivity and speed are multipliers, and I am reminded that virtually all US SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems in the US are connected to the Internet and hackable (meanwhile, the Chinese have figured how to hack into systems not connected to the Internet, but drawing electric power from the open grid).
+ Synchronous failures get worse when they jump system boundaries and created frayed less resilient networks.
+ He write of the thermodynamics of empire and the declining return on investment from energy discovery and exploitation.
+ He writes of migration getting much much worse in the future, which confirms my own view that border control is not the answer, stabilization & reconstruction of the source countries is the longer-term sustainable answer.
+ He credits George Soros with having the first intuitive understanding of the asymmetries of wealth in relation to destabilization of the world.
+ He observes that we have transformed and degrades half the Earth's land surface, and is particularly concerned with the washing away of entire nations of topsoil (compounded by agriculture that does not do deep-root farming).
+ As the book winds to a conclusion, the author discusses massive denial and the loss of resilience that gets worse each day.
+ "Non-extremists have a formidable 'collective action problem.'"
+ Need alternative values (I am reminded that the literature points out just two sustainable approaches to agriculture and community: the Amish and the Cuban). He notes that fundamentalists are especially ill-equipped by their myopia to be adaptive or resilient.
+ He covers the polarization between rich and poor. While other books listed below are more trenchant, the author has done a superb job of integrating historical, economic, social, and cultural works. This is a very fine book.
+ He adds a useful snippet on Cultural Intelligence, distinguishing between utilitarian values (likes and dislikes), moral values (fairness and justice), and existential values (significance and meaning).
+ Violence is discusses as stemming from motivation, opportunity, and framing--all of which can be found in the eight stages of genocide as defined by Dr. Greg Stanton of Genocide Watch.
+ He ends the book with praise of the open source model (search from my Gnomedex 2007 keytone, "Open Everything") and concludes that the Internet is not living up to its potential as a platform for large-scale problem solving. I agree, and I condemn Google for choosing to become an illicit vacuum cleaner of other people's information, rather than an open source platform for allowing every person to be a collector, processor, analyst, producer, and consumer of public intelligence (search for my book review of "Google 2.o: The Calculating Predator." IBM ando the Google partners are literally BLIND and refusing to assimilate documented early warnings on how Google is preparing to scorch banking, communications, data storage, entertainment, and publishing, all without respect for privacy or copyright, and without regulatory oversight.
I list below eight books I recommend for reading as an expansion of this elegant synthesis. At Earth Intelligence Network you can find a table of 1000+ books I have reviewed, sortable by threat, policy, or challenger.
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
Five Minds for the Future
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
Required Reading for all Who Care About the Planet July 5, 2007
George Ochsenfeld (Monee, Illinois USA)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This brilliant, courageous, inspiring, multidisciplinary book unflinchingly examines the ominous, ever increasing tectonic pressures--population imbalances, energy shortages, environmental damage, global warming, and the widening gaps between rich and poor--that threaten to disrupt, if not topple, civilization.
Historical, ecological, political, economic, scientific, sociological and psychological threads are woven together in a fascinating, extremely readable analysis of the mess we are in, how we got here, what we can expect in the future, and what we can do about it.
Homer-Dixon does not provide magic bullet solutions to our problems because, in fact, none exists. He does, however, suggest four important actions, including boosting the overall resilience of our civilization, especially critical systems like energy and food distribution. Most importantly, he stresses the cultivation of the prospective mind, which includes an openness to radically new ways of thinking about our world and about how we should live our lives.
The author states that "when a social earthquake erupts--when the established order starts to crack and crumble--much depends on what happens in the period immediately following the initial shock." A mega-crisis has the potential to jolt people awake from their social conditioning, and can bring out the very worst or the very best in people. Homer-Dixon tells us to prepare for that moment, so the forces of reason, tolerance and compassion will prevail.
This book is not for those wanting to pretend that band-aide solutions from corporate-owned politicians will save us. This book is a zen-like slap in the face designed to zap denial, and awaken prospective, creative intelligence, so that bold new solutions to our planetary problems can emerge.
If I could, I would make The Upside of Down required reading for everyone on the planet. When it comes to defining the global crisis, it is by far the best of the following related books which I've recently read:
James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil,
Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-
First Century (2006)
Stephen Leeb, The Coming Economic Collapse (2006)
Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006)
Sir Martin Rees, Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning (2003)
David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (2006)
Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable
Future(2007)
Raine Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics
(2007)
Jerry Mander & John Cavanagh, Alternatives to Economic Globalization
(2004)
Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came
into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming (2007)
Lester Brown, Plan B2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a
Civilization in Trouble(2006)
Paul & Anne Ehrlich, One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the
Human Future(2004)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 19
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