The Common Factors That Cause Societies To Die, From Viking Greenland to Modern Somalia

If we do not learn from the past, we’re ultimately doomed to repeat it. While our society may not be on the decline just yet, everything eventually must come to an end. Sandwich Board guys with raggedly clothes are on to something, I guess?

As a professor of Sociology, as well as the Founder and First President of the American Sociological Association Section on Development, Samuel Cohn is well-versed in the mistakes of societies past. His book All Societies Die: How to Keep Hope Alive [Cornell University Press, April 2021] considers societal decline and explosions of violence in a variety of historical and contemporary settings, including the Byzantine Empire, the French Revolution and the present-day Middle East.

Cohn’s unique and humorous voice assesses the past and looks to the future with kind eyes, enabling readers to both accept the cycle of life our society is a part of and move forward with the knowledge necessary to preserve our society for as long as we can.

In an interview, Cohn can further discuss:

•The “Circle of Societal Death” – what it is, what causes it and how it connects to other societal collapses in the past and helps us understand the root causes and avoidable issues
•The triggers of societal destruction – what we should be looking for and working to change in order to avoid societal collapse in the future
•How crime, corruption, and violence have impacted the rise and fall of past societies
•Why Big Government is essential for both prosperity and for societal survival