Good evening, everyone. Im the Deputy Director of programs at politics and prose bookstore. Id like to thank you all for joining us this evening. Tonights event is a joint effort with our venue part owners of the marvin theater. I am honored tonight to introduce doctor Jared Diamond. I work with academics every day. We offer over 100 classes yearly with local distinguished professors on subjects such as current and classic literature, history, politics, writing workshops as we are a community of lifelong learners and speaking of learning, Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the university of california los angeles. His work includes five bestselling books and hes here today to talk about the most recent book entitled upheaval turning point for nations, from the firsthand experience the history of the six countries where he lived and was in five of six languages. I asked which language he didnt speak and he said japanese but he had japanese relatives. Upheaval completes the trilogys of his book how societies choose to fail or succeed and the acclaimed guns, germs and steel. For the general nonfiction. His International Reach has extended to translations of his works in 30 languages and the notable Research Teaching the work deserved the Macarthur Foundation fellowship genius award. The japan cosmos prize as well as the numerous Research Teaching awards, lectures and grants from the american physiological society, National Geographic society of san diego among others. Professor diamond had been elected a member of all three of the leading scientific and academic honorary societie socid the National Academy of sciences, American Academy of arts and sciences and the philosophical. His breadth of interest in conservation, ecology, bio geography, physiology has touched nearly every continent of the world with over 22 expeditions and neighboring thailand who study the evolution of birds, his biological exploration is credited with the rediscovery of the longlost golden bird at the top professor diamond devised a comprehensive plan for indonesias new park system. The director of the Wildlife Fund conservation international. He notably adds a psychological dimension to the most recent book where he combines history, geography, economics, anthropology to examine how the nations and individuals respond to crisis through selective change. A welldocumented coping mechanism that is linked to personal trauma. She takes us on a journey of frustration experienced by nations recovering from crisis usually brought about by calamities were threats to the National Identity. Finland and world war ii with the soviet union, japan search for modern stability following hiroshima, chiles struggle under the dictator, indonesias rise from colonialism, germanys postworld war ii rebuilding and rebranding and australias rise from the colony. He examines the challenges within each country and the respective path towards recovery through the widely used 12 step approach. As one writes about professor diamonds Detailed Analysis of history and internationally inspired therapeutic approach to make both nations and individuals more resilient is nothing short of the urgent and groundbreaking. Please join me in welcoming this aweinspiring scholar to politics and prose community of lifelong learners. [applause] was the first check whether you can hear me okay. Its a great pleasure for me to be back in washington under less adventurous circumstances and a first try. My first trip to washington was also my first intercity travel by myself. I was born and grew up in boston and when i was about 14yearsold, i visited boston representativvisit austinrepresd cross that had its meetings in washington, d. C. And so i took a journey from boston to washington the first time i traveled by myself my parents put me on the train, i arrived in those days it was a big deal making longdistance calls, but i suppose when i arrived i called them i have no memory of it now. Only when i had my own children did i realize what migh ive isg through fuente wondered whether i was going to arrive in washington because parents worry about their children. Today as we speak my twin sons are 32yearsold but one of my son today as we speak is driving from los angeles to the National Park and probably has not yet arrived. Hes 32yearsold and much more confident in traveling then im, but our parents worry whether he got there just as my father undoubtedly in tuesdays wondered whether i got there okay to washington, d. C. I did get okay to washington, d. C. , and ive been coming back ever since. The type of books that i write are books of comparative history. Most historians write a single case studies, they write about one country so to get a book about the late 19th century germany. Writing both single case studies allows you to do that all 499 pages of the book to germany which you can discuss and lots of detail. I dont write that sort of book. It has its value tha value diret comparative histories comparing different countries. If you compare different countries, then you can devote fewer pages to the country, but comparisons allow you to pose questions and add the questions you would never raise and could better address in a single case studies. For example, there are so many books on the American Civil War with an entire book on the American Civil War you can devote six pages to the second day of the battle of gettysburg, but the books on the American Civil War never notice or discuss one of the most striking facts of the American Civil War, which was at the end of the war the victors did not kill the losers, only one person on the losing side, the commandants was killedtold, and thats really ul at the end. If you read jus register by then civil war you dont notice that or ask that. Why is it so unusual in that respect, that is an example of the things you can notice and answer by comparative studies. My current book follows on the comparative history, collapsefrom a different set of people compares National Political crises in the countries that i know best where ive lived and where except for japan i speak or spoke the language where friends go back 60 years. There are countries that suffered political crises either as the result of an invasion or threaten invasion. The tiny country of finland invaded by the soviet union november 301949. Japan threatened with invasion after centuries of isolation by the arrival of the steamships of cannons in 1853. Which launched japan on a decadelong process of the westernization to be able to resist the west while still maintaining much of the japanese identity. A couple of crises consisted of internal explosions are in chile six years before the kenosha coup detat. In the indonesian genocide of 1965 when the Indonesian Army and people that ar are productie anput up tothat killed at leasta million indonesians. And then there are a couple of slowly unfolding in the countries that i know well. I was living in germany on the date of the berlin wall was erected and so over the decades ive seen how germany is gradually dulled with the legacies and gradually laid the ground for its reunification. In australia where they begin working in 1964 still have a policy and then over the decades gradually undid that policy up to the point where today second only to israel around the world in the fraction of its population that is immigrants or children of immigrants. And when i brought my son in 2008 i bought them across the University Campus and felt as if i was on the university of california berkeley or ucla campus that was unthinkable in australia interesting for themselves, they also raised practical questions of why some countries deal with the crisis more successfully than others. Perhaps the recent crisis in the modern countries could provide guidance for the crisis now developing in the u. S. And britain and japan and the whole world. There are many books by historians already about National Political crisis from the new perspective mainly of the personal crisis all of us have to deal with as individuals, and im sure youve all been through personal crisis and you know the causes from your own experience or that of your friend, people are thrown into the crisis by the breakup or threatebreakupwere threatenef marriages were other relationships with the death of a loved one, but if your child or spouse or parent or sibling that throws into doubt your view of the world as a just place or a serious setback to your health or career or financial security. Youve all experienced it ourselves or youve seen it in your friends all of those posed the question we either confront or avoid confronting. What did i do wrong . What do i have to change about myself . What has gone wrong in my life . What doesnt need changing and what does need changing so i dont get into this mess again . Im interested in the personal crisis because of my own experience but also because my wife is a clinical psychologist with a specialty in crisis therapy which is a branch of psychotherapy counseling that instead of seeing a client for years and having the leisure time to explore what happened in Early Childhood and how that affects you now, crisis therapy instead involves seeking people in a crisis who have defined a new way of dealing with my fast typically within about six weeks a crisis therapist sees the client for just six weeks. Its got to go fast because you all know from your experience when you are in a crisis you cant stay in a state of limbo forever. You either have to find a new way of dealing with the world or you will relapse into your own lawn and adaptive ways and in the saddest cases, there are cases of suicide comes the crisis therapist have to figure out fast who is dealing with their problem and who is not. We come home at the end of the week when she and her fellow therapist would meet and go over the clients to figure out who was making progress and who was not. We recognize a dozen factors which again all of you will know from personal experience. A dozen factors that affect the outcomes of personal crisis and as we talked about in the factors they recognize that a similar factors or ones for at least which those outcome factors serve as metaphors. Similar considerations apply to the outcomes of National Crisis over what course it now poses unique problems of their own. Nations have leadernations havee individuals to raise questions, the nations to reconcile conflicting interests of groups. We as individuals dont have to reconcile conflicting interests of groups. The outcome predictors that we found for the personal crisis command again they are things which all of you have either experienced or have seen in other people that math against outcome predicted crisis. The first step in dealing with the crisis is acknowledging that you are in a crisis. If you deny that you were in a crisis you will get nowhere towards a result. Another early start is accepting responsibility. Its tempting in a crisis to blame it on other people. It is all the fault of those other people. But if you blame it all on the other people and dont accept responsibility that theres something you can do your self of course you are not going to make any steps towards resolving the crisis. And already you can see the analogies to the National Crisis nations may acknowledge or deny or accept responsibility for the problems or deny responsibility and say the problems of the United States or the fault of canada, mexico, china and nothing is wrong with the United States which is a guaranteed way not to solve the problems. You know from your experience in a personal crisis that makes it a big difference whether or not you get help from other people come emotional or material help from friends and whether you can look to other people as models of how to solve similar problems. Nations need to get help or they fail to get help from allies not from personal friends and nations also may look to other nations as models or refuse to look to other nations as models. You know from your personal experience with the self appraisal is essential you have to be clear about what is working in you and what is not. And again to solve the crisis they have to practice honest self appraisal. Those are just some examples of the outcome predicted in the crisis that you have all experienced or that you have seen friends and relatives experiencing. But which in some cases has have close parallels the financial crisis such as getting help from others. It enables you to get through a crisis that is the metaphor of the nations while they dont have ego strength they do have National Identities which are suggested by the ego strength and National Identities are important in the can treat getting through the crisis. Lets consider an actual crisis. This crisis that i experienced is also the one i developed my books by teaching the material to my undergraduates year after year until the book is ready for the publication. The material of this book i first talked to my undergraduates in 2013 and each year since then. The story that im about to tell you about now is that most upsetting as a National Political crisis because the parallels of the United States are so obvious. Ive lived in chile, the latin American Country in 1967. At that time, chile is the latin American Country with the longest history of uninterrupted democracy. And when i went to chili in 1967 in france and explained that the country to the visiting americans, the thing they said was we are not like those other latin american countries. We are a democracy. We have an uninterrupted history of democracy for the last 150 years. We know how to govern ourselves. That was the sentence we know how to govern ourselves. This was 1967 but it was also at that time spiraling into a political compromise. Does that suggest anything about the United States toda today the breakdown in the political compromise . None of my friends small how it would play out. They democratically elected a president whod been a great minister of Public Health for two adopted disastrous economic and foreign policies. He tried to change it to fast although he had won by the plurality that voted against him and so he was not a surprise that there was a coup detat under the general. What shocked them was the military government remained in power out for a couple of months but for 17 years but smashed world records. The o. J. Did it coconut shy to bbe at the by taking the free market policies of Milton Friedman or what he perceived as those policies at the university of chicago. Eventually, he miscalculated and was voted out of office in 1989 and returned to chile but the socialists when they came back into power democratically for te socialists, 100,000 of those that havent been told, many of them had been living in westernn europe where thewesterneurope wm operating differently. In contrast with the breakdown of political compromise and the intransigence of the chilean socialists in the 1960s they obligated in the western European Countries and they saw the socialists could achieve a lot of their goals by not being intransigence but by compromising with those different views while the chilean socialists also saw those countries and disasters of the socialists have learned and chilly today is once again the most democratic country in latin america. The story of chile illustrates parallels between the personal crisis and National Crisis. Chili remained a catholic homogeneous country without any change in its borders. When they came back into power, it was again a selective change. The socialists reintroduced the democracy and liberal social policies, but they increased the military governments freemarket policies and illustrates the importance of the flexibility which you will know from your own experience is important with personal crisis, national flexibility is important to dealing with the National Crisis. For the lack of help that you all know from personal crisis and in this case help from allies or lack of help than chile and illustrates the importance of the National Identity in getting through the National Crisis. When the first socialist president came back into office after pinochet hide went in his inaugural address and chileans that suffered under pinochet were hoping to hear how he was going to take revenge should on the people who commi who come aa government that have killed and tortured so many chilean but in the first president ial underestimate the goal was to build for all chileans, and what that meant is they turned pinochet under power and they voted for the military government and recognized the socialists to compromise with the government and the spent those killed and tortured would have to put together and would have made possible was the strong National Identity, the National Identity in which there hasnt been a taking of revenge that there was under the war. By now you may have been or should have been getting uncomfortable because what happened in chile is a great political compromise resulting in the end of democracy. Chile illustrates why we study history. It is a breakdown of political compromise and this has been thn sitting in usually dated to the 1990s. The breakdown in the political compromise, you know all this i. More than any congress in history because it cant agree, cant reach copper mines is about passing a law.