> The fall, like the rise of a civilisation is a highly complex operation which can only be distorted by oversimplification I agree with this and actually thin

> The fall, like the rise of a civilisation is a highly complex operation which can only be distorted by oversimplification I agree with this and actually think the article does a decent job of arguing this case against the alarmist approach "X killed civilization A; let's put a lot our efforts in combating X now", which seems to be getting more and more common today. > Any time you see population levels in precipitous decline, accompanied by a dramatic loss of technological and organisational capabilities, you are seeing evidence of some extremely unhappy individuals whose civilisations are, for them, collapsing. It seems to me that you are switching definitions somewhat. I understood the article's "civilizational" collapse to mean a level of decline that, once the society crosses some Rubicon, is irreversible within a generation or two. If I understand your argument you are using collapse from personal perspective: enough people see their lives collapse or decline enough. To me, that second definition is a lot less severe. If you look at Eastern Europe during the second world war (Cambodia of Pol Pot's times, etc. etc.) those events are likely to be viewed as a collapse by many people suffering through them, the civilization is not lost and society bounces back within at most a couple of generations once the stimuli are reset.