NEW YORK—He sat in front of his television, flustered and unable to figure out how to use his 42-button remote control, even though his son had written directions for him.
It no longer mattered that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond knew how to use a slide ruler to solve logarithms.
“I, at age 75, am incompetent at skills essential for the everyday American life,” Diamond joked.
Although he may not know how to work his television, Diamond is a celebrated expert in multiple fields including geography, ornithology, ecology, and environmental history. He is most well known as the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
His latest book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? explores the ways in which tribal societies handle some of the issues that are now growing in the United States.
Diamond spoke about his chapter on elderly care at The New School on Jan. 7.
Diamond does not recommend that modern societies return to hunting and gathering; instead, he advocates that there is much to learn from the traditional society’s treatment and view of retirees.
