The main thing that gives me hope is the media. We have radio, TV, magazines, and books, so we have the possibility of learning from societies that are remote from us, like Somalia. We turn on the TV and see what blew up in Iraq or we see conditions in Afghanistan.

Diamond is expressing a characteristic theme of his work: that societies can learn from one another’s successes and failures if they have access to comparative information. He frames modern mass media as a historically novel mechanism for “social learning,” allowing distant crises—war, state collapse, humanitarian disaster—to become visible to outsiders in near real time. The hope, in his view, lies not in spectacle but in the possibility that exposure to other societies’ outcomes can prompt reflection, policy change, and preventive action at home. The examples (Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan) underscore that the lessons are often harsh: media can function as a warning system, making the costs of political and environmental breakdown harder to ignore.