Historian Jared Diamond on Countries in Crisis

Historian Jared Diamond on Countries in Crisis | History Extra Podcast - History Extra

"It must be differences between national character of Germans and national characters of Japanese that make it possible for for Germans to acknowledge guilt and to apologize. And that make it difficult or impossible for Japanese to acknowledge guilt and apologize.

This is something shared between Japan and Indonesia as well. In East Asia and Southeast Asia generally, there is not the openness about feelings that there is in the West. And in my work in Indonesia, it's my experience that Indonesians don't say no. If I ask them something, and they don't want to do it, they won't say no, we won't do it. They'll say oh, we’ll do it. And then they don't do it. So it's a difference.

Partly a difference between Germany and Japan, or between the West and East Asia in openness...

In the case of Australia, just as Britain has been struggling with the issue of national identity - who are we? Australia during the time that I've been visiting Australia, which began in 1964, Australia has been struggling with an issue of national identity.

When I arrived in Australia, Australia viewed themselves as an outpost to Britain, loyal British subjects who happened to be near Asia. But by God we were loyal British subjects and we died for the British motherland at Gallipoli. But during World War Two, they were shocked when when Britain did not succeed in defending Australia.

And two other things changed. Australia wanted immigrants, there weren't enough British who wanted to emigrate, Australia began taking in then people from the Baltic republics and Italians and Greeks, who did not share loyalty to the Queen, and were receptive, were tolerant of Asian immigrants which the first British settlers were not.

And in addition, Australia's trade patterns changed, just as have Britain's trade patterns chain. Initially, Australia's trade was overwhelmingly with Britain, but it's not, was not so much the case that Australia threw Britain out. But that Britain threw Australia out. Britain recognized, changing trade patterns in Britain, realized that it had to join the EU. And that meant erecting trade barriers against Australia, which for Australia felt like a real betrayal.

So Australians from the 60s onwards, weaned themselves of their British identity in 1979, around 1979 under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the White Australia policy was explicitly given up. And when I in 19, 2008 took my son to the University of Queensland campus, and walked across the campus with him, I felt that I was at University of California, Berkeley or UCLA, namely, here I was on an Asian majority campus. In 1964, this would have been unthinkable. But that's how much Australia had changed... That was 44 years...

Why political polarization in the United States more than in other countries. I can't prove what my answer is. It seemed to me that the political polarization in the US is part of a general social polarization in the academic sphere and other spheres.

And when I asked what could have caused that, my guess is that it's by comparison with New Guinea, the other part of the world that I know best, that it's the decline of face to face communication in the US. It's easy to be abusive, and swear at someone who consists of words on a screen. It would be difficult for me to look you in the face and start swearing at you. But if you are words on my screen, yes, it would be easy for me to swear at you. So I see a, possibly a cause for the polarization in the United States has been an outgrowth of the decline of face to face communication.

But that then raises the question, why in the United States, and why not. And I mean, Italians, and Japanese use cell phones more than Americans do. I think there are a couple of reasons, one, that the distances in the United States are much greater. In Italy, when you move, Italians don't move that much. And when they move, you're still within a day's journey of anywhere else in Italy. Whereas in the United States, your movements is likely to be coast to coast. And it's a five day train journey, although it's a half day plane flight.

And the other thing is that the US just had less social capital to begin with. The US has been historically much more into independence and self reliance. Friendships have counted for less in the United States than they have in Britain, than in Italy and Germany... these technologies, these non face to face, they began in the US the internet was invented, cell phones, and cell phones took off in the US, so that it began earlier with us and there was less resistance...

Having been in US academic life since the mid 1950s, I know firsthand that there's much more nastiness in American academic life now than there was decades ago. Decades ago, when I had academic arguments, I would still take vacations. I would argue with someone about water transport, and then we got a rental car together and went off to see British cathedrals. Today, that would be - people that disagree with with Guns, Germs, and Steel, there's no way that I'm going to go on a vacation with them.

‘Someone ended a book review of yours by saying shut up, is that right?’

‘That's right’

‘That’s outrageous, I can’t believe someone would write that’

‘That was a mild book, there was another book review of whose title was capital F blank black K U, Jared Diamond. That was the title of the review in an academic journal’"