Jared Diamond, political therapist

 
Jared Diamond’s book, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change, is not the finished project he had envisaged.

Since he started it in 2013, Trump has become President of the United States and Britain has voted to leave the European Union. In brief, the present world is not the one he predicted six years ago.

The book was inspired by a conversations with his wife, Marie, who works as a crisis therapist. For Diamond, countries can deal with crisis in the same way that individuals can cope. “If you deny it’s a crisis, you’ll get nowhere at resolving it,” he said. His book deals with the breakdown of  political compromise.

Despite his criticism of Donald Trump, he said his book refrains from being partisan because he didn't want to alienate readers. “For solving the problems of the United States,” he said, “it’s going to take all Americans.” 

However difficult the current political situation, we have reason to be hopeful, Diamond said. “The world faces difficult problems. The good news is that all those big problems are caused by us humans...since we are causing the problems, in principle, we can stop the problems.”

_{Picture by Paul Musso}

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