## Metadata - Author: [[William Ophuls]] - Full Title: Immoderate Greatness - Category: #books ## Highlights - Those afflicted by hubris become the agents of their own destruction. Like a tragic hero, a civilization comes to a ruinous end due to intrinsic flaws that are the shadow side of its very virtues. ([Location 127](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=127)) - As Livy famously said of his own civilization:   Rome was originally, when it was poor and small, a unique example of austere virtue; then it corrupted, it spoiled, it rotted itself by all the vices; so, little by little, we have been brought into the present condition in which we are able neither to endure the evils from which we suffer, nor the remedies we need to cure them. ([Location 163](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=163)) - “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within,” said Will Durant. ([Location 172](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=172)) - A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures. Seneca1 ([Location 182](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=182)) - The city is an ecological parasite. It arrogates to itself matter and energy that do not naturally belong to it by sucking resources away from its hinterland. So the central institution of civilization exists, and can only exist, by systematically exploiting its rural and natural periphery. It is this exploitation that supports the higher level of social and economic complexity that characterizes civilization.3 ([Location 188](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=188)) - The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. Albert Bartlett1 ([Location 317](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=317)) - the Second Law states that entropy tends to increase (where entropy is a measure of chaos, randomness, and disorder). In layman’s terms, this means that energy tends to decay into less and less useful forms. ([Location 456](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=456)) - civilization expedites entropy. For example, agricultural production is the foundation of civilized life. But the word production is a misnomer, for what humans actually do is mine the topsoil. Virgin soil is a complex ecosystem developed over millennia that contains a myriad of chemical elements and biological beings within a very specific physical structure. Humanity breaks into this ecological climax to profit from the rich store of energy that it contains. The product is food for human consumption—but the byproduct is erosion, compaction, leaching, and other damage to the soil’s vitality and integrity. ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=475)) - farmers have learned to counteract the worst entropic consequences of agriculture by various means: crop rotation, fallowing, terracing, manuring, and the like. These measures do indeed slow down the losses. In fact, given favorable circumstances it is possible to construct systems of sustainable agriculture that keep entropic losses to a bare minimum. Such systems are necessarily labor intensive and scrupulously conservative—more like horticulture than our usual notion of agriculture. ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=488)) - given the propensity of civilizations to grow both in population and appetite, demand for agricultural products is bound to increase. Since the land in its natural state is incapable of meeting this increased demand, external energy must be applied to boost yields artificially. Thus entropy increases, as the quantity of energy consumed per unit of output rises higher. This development reaches its apex in industrialized agriculture, which is a biological machine that turns petroleum into calories at a ratio of approximately ten to one.4 ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=496)) - It is vital to understand that technology is not a source of energy. That is, it is not a fuel in its own right, only a means for putting fuel to work or for transforming one energy resource into another. ([Location 552](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=552)) - Similarly, technology can make new energy resources available—but only by expending energy to find and exploit them. So technology does not make energy out of thin air. On the contrary, technology is always ultimately dependent on the supply of energy. If the quantity or quality of energy resources dwindles, ([Location 557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=557)) - Above all, technology depends critically on energy density. The total amount of available energy is staggering, but very little of it is available in concentrated form. That is the beauty of fossil fuels. They are the energy-dense residue of past solar energy in the form of buried organic matter that has been subjected to eons of geological heat and pressure. With such a concentrated source of energy, technology can perform wonders, because it is, in effect, traveling thermodynamically downhill from dense to diffuse—from coal to electricity and waste heat, instead of vice versa. By contrast, dispersed energy can do much less work and therefore limits what technology can do. Solar rays will make hot water for a household but do not lend themselves to running a large power plant. ([Location 561](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=561)) - technology can concentrate dispersed energy but only by traveling thermodynamically uphill from diffuse to dense. To illustrate the challenge, imagine trying to recover the approximately 15,000 tons of gold dissolved in seawater. Although technically feasible, the capital and energy cost of turning atoms into ingots would be prohibitive. ([Location 569](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=569)) - Thus one of the best ways of understanding the relationship of energy, entropy, and technology is by examining economic systems in terms of net energy—that is, how much energy remains after subtracting the cost of effecting the transformation. The technical term is energy return on investment or EROI (also known as EROEI for energy return on energy invested). As we have seen, the EROI of industrial agriculture is negative: it takes ten units in to get one unit out. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=573)) - It used to be that it took the energetic equivalent of only one barrel of petroleum to obtain a hundred barrels—that is, an EROI of one hundred to one. But this ratio has now declined to roughly fifteen to one and is destined to fall even further, because the remaining resources are on the whole more difficult, dangerous, and expensive to extract and refine.5 ([Location 583](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=583)) - Perhaps the best way to understand the impact of the entropy law on human affairs is to use a pointed analogy. Nature operates what is, in effect, an extremely onerous tax system. Even the latter days of the Roman Empire, when people fled cities in droves to escape the taxman, seem benign by comparison. For every matter-energy transaction has to pay a thermodynamic tax that is greater by far than the value of the transaction itself. Thus, for instance, nature taxes the conversion of coal into electricity at a rate of roughly 200 percent! ([Location 606](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=606)) - the tax is for the most part unseen, and it is not usually paid immediately. Or, to put it another way, some reap the benefits of the transaction and succeed in shoving the costs off onto others: other species, other places, other classes, other generations pay the tax. Hence the tendency is for a civilization to continue developing despite an accumulating thermodynamic debt load. At some point, however, the taxman presents his bill. “Progress” then ceases, and the civilization finds itself in dire straits. ([Location 612](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=612)) - Civilization is trapped in a thermodynamic vicious circle from which escape is well nigh impossible. The greater a civilization becomes, the more the citizens produce and consume—but the more they produce and consume, the larger the increase in entropy. The longer economic development continues, the more depletion, decay, degradation, and disorder accumulate in the system as a whole, even if it brings a host of short-term benefits. ([Location 618](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=618)) - The only way out would be radically to transform civilization so that the human economy resembled the natural economy. Nature is highly efficient in thermodynamic terms. The steady flow of solar energy is not simply consumed but is instead used to build up a rich and diverse capital stock. To put it more technically, nature internalizes thermodynamic costs, using the same matter and energy over and over to wring a maximum of life out of a minimum of energy. ([Location 627](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=627)) - Although it might be theoretically possible for the human economy to mimic the natural economy, it would involve a radical transformation of civilization as we know it. Societies would have to be far more intricately and closely coupled—just as in natural ecosystems. And individuals would have to tolerate strong checks on human will and desire—that is, powerful negative feedback, just as in natural ecosystems. ([Location 632](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=632)) - A juggler, no matter how dedicated and skilled, can only handle only so many balls. Add even one more, and he loses control. Now imagine that same juggler trying to keep his own balls in the air while simultaneously fielding and throwing balls from and to multiple others. That is roughly the situation in a complex civilization: many millions of individuals and entities are engaged in a mass, mutual juggling act. How likely is it that there will be no dropped balls? And how will it be possible to keep adding balls and participants and not overload the system so that it begins to break down? ([Location 669](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=669)) - The problem of managing complexity has two major aspects. The first is sheer overload. Thanks to the exponential function, as civilizations grow the number of balls that need to be juggled escalates. Add in the difficulty of dealing with ecological exhaustion and diminishing thermodynamic returns, and the problem is bound to become overwhelming in the long run. The civilization’s very greatness makes it unwieldy—hard to control and harder still to change. At some point, it is likely to encounter what Thomas Homer-Dixon calls an “ingenuity gap.”4 The human ability to cope lags the accumulating problems, until the chasm between the demand for ingenuity and the supply of it can no longer be bridged. ([Location 686](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=686)) - We like to think that we have attained our current level of complexity through sheer scientific prowess. But this is at best a half-truth. It takes vast energy resources to implement the technological solutions that enable our complexity. For example, we have already seen that the enormous “productivity” of industrial agriculture is a sham. It is a machine for converting ten calories of fossil-fuel energy into one calorie of food. ([Location 736](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=736)) - because energy is the sine qua non of complexity, anything that diminishes the quantity, quality, or efficiency of energy threatens a complex civilization’s survival. ([Location 746](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=746)) - systems analysts have found that company executives, legislators, and other decision makers often have a cogent grasp of the problem that needs to be solved and are usually committed to solving it—that is, they are not simply looking for an easy way out—but they miss the solution, because it is “counterintuitive” (i.e., surprising to the linear mind). In fact, says Meadows, even when they have identified with great accuracy the best leverage point, “more often than not they push the change in the wrong direction.” ([Location 801](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=801)) - the very fact that complex systems have key links and nodes connected by multiple feedback loops means that they are vulnerable to a cascade of failure. To put it another way, systems that are too tightly coupled or too efficient are fragile; they lack resilience. ([Location 831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=831)) - Complex adaptive systems are stable until they are overstressed. Then one perturbation too many, or one that arrives at the wrong moment, can tip the system into instability virtually overnight, with unpredictable and frequently distressing consequences. As Will Durant noted, “From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.” ([Location 844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=844)) - Once a civilization is plagued by numerous intractable problems, most attempts at reform will therefore either fail or make matters worse. Indeed, ironically, it may be the very effort to reform that precipitates the collapse. It was perestroika and glasnost that allowed the stupendous fabric of the USSR to implode. Similarly, it was Louis XVI’s convening of the Estates-General that triggered the revolution and regicide that liquidated the ancien régime.23 As these examples suggest, the timing and trajectory of collapse are essentially unpredictable and uncontrollable. Hence planning to avoid breakdown or to make a gentle and controlled transition from one stable state to another may be next to impossible. That does not mean that planning is useless. As all generals learn, war plans never survive first contact with the enemy, but planning is nonetheless an indispensable preparation for battle. However, it does mean that a gentle and gradual transition that goes according to plan is highly unlikely. In effect, chaos sets at naught the human pretension to mastery of the historical process. ([Location 865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=865)) - the complexity that is the essence of civilization is utterly dependent on a continuous input of physical, intellectual, and moral energy without which it simply cannot be sustained. ([Location 880](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=880)) - the real product of genuine systems analysis is not solutions but wisdom. To wit, understanding that excessive complexity is both costly and perilous and that management in the sense of control is unachievable. This would lead us to see that the proper (or only) way to “manage” civilization is by not allowing it to become too complex—in fact, deliberately designing in restraints, redundancy, and resiliency, even if the price is less power, freedom, efficiency, or profit than we might otherwise gain through greater complexity. To revert to our financial metaphor, to prevent busts, one must stop booms from happening in the first place by taking away the punchbowl of credit well before the party has gotten out of hand. So wisdom consists in consciously renouncing “immoderate greatness.” Unfortunately, although naturally clever, human beings are not innately wise, especially in crowds.24 Hence they pursue greatness instead of renouncing it, and any attempt to take away the punchbowl meets with fierce resistance. ([Location 886](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=886)) - any peasant knows that judicious pruning (i.e., reducing the complexity of trees) increases the health and yield of his orchard. So why don’t we prudently check the growth of our civilization and prune back our level of complexity to achieve resilience and sustainability? ([Location 899](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=899)) - Barring an earlier dissolution due to external forces, it seems to take a mere ten generations for a civilization to traverse the arc from élan to decadence. Hence they appear to have a natural lifespan of roughly 250 years that human action can do little to extend. ([Location 1025](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1025)) - The original vigor and virtue of a civilization is morality in a highly concentrated form. As such, it has only one direction to travel: toward a less concentrated state. ([Location 1060](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1060)) - Bluntly put, human societies are addicted to their ruling ideas and their received way of life, and they are fanatical in their defense. Hence they are extraordinarily reluctant to reform. “To admit error and cut losses,” said Tuchman, “is rare among individuals, unknown among states.”6 ([Location 1179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1179)) - If retooling is hard in the scientific sphere, how much more so in the social, economic, and political arena, where attachment to the old way of thinking and acting is far stronger and where much more is at stake than prestige. Discerning what is a genuine anomaly that calls into question the old order and what is a mere problem that can be solved with just a little more effort is also far from easy. Indeed, in the absence of a standard of truth similar to the scientific method, there are no clear criteria for deciding. Thus participants in the debate are, with rare exceptions, all partisan defenders of some vested interest or cherished ideology, however much they may couch their arguments in terms of the public interest. ([Location 1197](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1197)) - Why reform is both difficult and perilous was elucidated by Machiavelli:   There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. ([Location 1332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1332)) - the task is not to forestall a foreordained collapse but, rather, to salvage as much as possible from it, lest the fall precipitate a dark age in which the arts and adornments of civilization are partially or completely lost. To this end, just as prudent mariners carry lifeboats and practice abandoning ship, a global civilization in its terminal phase would be well advised to prepare arks, storehouses, and banks designed to preserve the persons, tools, and materials with which to retain or reconstitute some semblance of civilized life post-collapse. ([Location 1420](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1420)) - I can envision an alternative to civilization as it is currently conceived and constituted. This alternative, which could not be imposed but would have to emerge slowly and organically, should allow humanity to thrive in reasonable numbers on a limited planet for millennia to come. But it would require a fundamental change in the ethos of civilization—to wit, the deliberate renunciation of greatness in favor of simplicity, frugality, and fraternity.15 For the pursuit of greatness is always a manifestation of hubris, and hubris is always punished by nemesis. Whether human beings are capable of such sagacity and self-restraint is a question only the future can answer. ([Location 1446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00AVBHKEM&location=1446))