SiTU ACADEMY

lesson 7

“Why do societies collapse? You may not think, that this of great importance to us. If you ask people on the street if our kingdom will collapse, they will answer: no, of course not. States like Somalia collaps and former Jugoslavia has collapsed. In history the Maya-civilization collapsed. Some decades after their most ambitious buildingprojects, they left the city and disappeared into the jungle.

But historically many societies have collapsed and disappeared. Our country exists for more than 400 years, which makes it one of the respectable European states.

But like extinction, the collapse of a society is inevatable. But when will this happen.

There exist 5 fields of analysis, on which can be decided, how stable a country is. A kind of stress-test.

The human impact of the environment. Climate change; Relation with friendly, neighbouring societies; Relation with hostile, (neighbouring) societies. Political, economical, social and cultural factors.”

Master Klaas presented the text on the central screen and was silent for a while, to let them analyze and process the information. He continued his lesson. “Let's project these factors on our own province and we will see, to which conclusions it leads us.

First, the impact on the environment. Greenhouse gasses are still emmited, nature is diminished, the sea is exploited in a terrible way and we all want to drive a car. Roads, industrial developments and parkinglots diminshe the traditional landscape. And last but not least, we burn our carbage around the corner. One of the many forms of poluting the water, the sky and the earth.

Secondly climate-change. Nobody can ignore it anymore. At this moment the temperatures are rising, which will have an enormous impact on our agriculture. But there is another scenario. North-Western Europe could be confronted with an Ice-age. This too will have an collosal impact on our foodsupply and on the export of agricultural products, on which our local economy thrives. Relation with friendloy states means for instance the economical dependency of our neighbours. For this area tourism is a moneymaker. But the number of tourists can drop dramatically. For all kinds of reasons, as we have after the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan. Openly hostile societies are far away. But the threat of global terrorism has become an important topic, which touches all levels of society. Government is a mess, social structures disappear and our cultural identity ridiculed. I leave the conclusions up to you.”