The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

by Thomas Homer-Dixon

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1597260657
• ISBN13: 9781597260657
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Island Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Spectacular Synthesis, Signals Emergence of Collective Intelligence

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 'collectiv

Required Reading for all Who Care About the Planet

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

Forestalling Catastrophe despite breakdowns.

Thomas Homer-Dixon has three great gifts. The first is the ability to integrate information from widely diverse sources and subject areas, the second is to understand the significance of what he has integrated, and the third is to explain what he understands clearly and forcefully. An alert eighth grader could easily understand The Upside of Down but it explicates vital concepts and relationships--supported by good data and sometimes innovative research--understood to date by few of our best analysts. Homer-Dixon's central thesis is that we have built a civilization of great complexity and a resulting inflexibility that is dependent on an infusion of energy unsustainable over coming decades. Many people think they already understand that, but their understanding is primitive in comparison to what this book conveys. Breakdowns, spreading through our complex systems, are inevitable. Homer-Dixon is extremely convincing and ultimately frightening. He offers no easy solutions. The "upside" promised in the title is that, if we are extremely astute and take the difficult steps self-preservation demands, breakdowns need not lead to catastrophe and may ultimately push us toward revitalization and renewal. Don't expect many answers from this book, but read it to understand the depth and profundity of the problems you only think you understand today. Among the analyses of our civilization I have seen, this work occupies first place.

Worrying Efficiently

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.

Outstanding book

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.