The Watchman's Rattle Examines Triggers for Social Collapse

October 12, 2010

By Melanie Zoltan

Released October 12, Rebecca D. Costa's The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction looks at reversing social collapse via thoughtful U-turn.

When societies develop two signature characteristics, gridlock and the substitution of beliefs for knowledge, collapse begins, according to author Rebecca D. Costa in her new book, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction, released on October 12. If ideas are beliefs that have not yet been proven, as Costa claims in the first chapter, then how do her ideas about a society's focus on symptoms, rather than underlying causes, for collapse hold up to the "prove it" test?

Categorizing The Watchman's Rattle - Part Philosophy, History, Sociology

Costa's main argument is that all societies reach a point where a "cognitive threshold" kicks in, the point at which a culture's complexity outstrips its ability to perceive and act on it. All societies need to pursue beliefs and knowledge simultaneously; one without the other halts progress and leads to eventual collapse. Costa's claim is that when societies hit this cognitive threshold, gridlock develops. When gridlock stops the acquisition of knowledge, beliefs take a more prominent role. Beliefs that cannot be proven dictate action, with misguided or even disastrous consequences.

Most of the book is a series of test cases and analogies chosen to prove this central thesis. For instance, the Mayans worked to develop highly-sophisticated water storage systems. But these designs and implementations were based on the belief that there would be water, even as precipitation declined in central America. No level of perfection or elegance in design and utility of water storage can make up for the fact that drought would persist. The Mayans turned to ritualistic sacrifice to feed a belief that to do so would encourage a higher power to send water.

Costa discusses an exception to the Mayan actions -- a subculture called the Lamanai. The Lamanai created even more complex water storage systems, using underground cisterns to protect water supplies from exposure to sunlight and to reduce evaporation. The increased complexity and logic included the twin concepts of knowledge and beliefs, permitting the Lamanai to last for as long as 300 years past the main Mayan culture. Eventually the Lamanai reached their cognitive threshold and developed ritual sacrifice as well, hoping to convince the ephemeral Gods to send water.
Rebecca D. Costa's Concept of Gridlock, Knowledge and Beliefs

Where the book shines is in the author's identification of five supermemes that portend stagnation and collapse: irrational opposition, the personalization of blame, counterfeit correlation, silo thinking and extreme economics. These man-made memes impede progress and contribute heavily to cognitive thresholds and gridlock.

In each of the five chapters devoted to these supermemes in The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction, Costa deconstructs examples ranging from overcrowding in prisons, AIG bonuses, obesity assumptions, healthcare systems, and training chimpanzees to learn basic economic principles. These five chapters are the heart of her book, and had she focused on these and drilled deep into them to take insights and use an inductive approach, The Watchman's Rattle could have been a true classic.

Rise and Fall of Civilizations - Why, Not What

In The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction Costa returns to one basic loop again and again: cognitive threshold reached, gridlock hits, beliefs replace knowledge, sociey behaves without logic, cultural collapse ensues. On the surface the book is like one of Malcolm Gladwell's works (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers) or even an attempt to touch Naseem Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan. The book jacket for The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction mentions Gladwell, Thomas Friedman, and Jared Diamond, and I can see why. On the surface, Costa takes an enormous idea and drills it down to the highly specific, a deductive romp through evolutionary neurobiology that takes various anecdotes and comes up with a conclusion that says when we hit the cognitive threshold, irrational behaviors emerge and collapse follows. It is only insight that can save us.

Yet the reader is left wondering: if humans have a cognitive threshold when faced with a complexity that goes beyond the brain's ability, how would the brain have the insight necessary to overcome the cognitive threshold? It's a Dunning-Kruger Effect test, but applied to societies and not individual humans. From a knowledge standpoint, Costa's claim is a tautology. From a belief standpoint, her claim is a koan. Either way, The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction is a good read, but not a great one, with five insightful chapters that save the book from its own cognitive threshold.

Read more at Suite101: The Watchman's Rattle Examines Triggers for Social Collapse http://www.suite101.com/content/the-watchmans-rattle-examines-triggers-f...