The two texts, The Maya Collapses chapter in Collapse:How societies chose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond, and the Sleepwalking into the Future chapter in The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler are similar in more ways than one. They both not only discuss the issues of collapse but how societies in particular collapse. Of the similarities,I think the most important is the way their economic and social dependencies were the cause of the collapse. During the Maya era, the Mayan people were very dependant on their corn and their crops and did consistent harvesting to make sure their food stayed fresh and dependable . As the Maya depended on corn, our society depends on oil. We need oil for everything we do, as well as food. We need oil to survive because without oil we have no food, transportation, or the basic comforts for the lives we lead. The Mayan economy depended on corn as our economy depends on oil. When the drought occurred and slowly destroyed the crops, the Mayan economy followed. As our oil drought has become more stagnant than it was before, our economy has followed and is at a constant decline. We are facing a Global economic depression because of our lack of oil.

The Mayans needed their corn the way we need our oil. I think that the way the Mayan civilization collapsed may not happen to us because although we are dependent on our oil, we still have other technologies that can be used to help us be accustomed to the loss of oil. Not replace it. As corn could not be replaced for the Mayans, oil cannot be replaced for us.