Twilight at Easter [Second Draft/Continuation]

After discussing about chapter 2: Twilight at Easter of Jared Diamond's "Collapse" in class, as well as rereading it, I learned that a major contribution to Easter Island's downfall was their abuse towards the land. Contrary to what was said in my original response, the Easter Islanders were not as cooperative with the land as I have claimed. In fact, they are quite the opposite. Although, the Easter Islands did use rock gardens, which I described as a method for them to work with nature." they approached the land, particularly the trees, in a way that ultimately led to their destruction. I found that what I said in the previous blog was a lie. This is due to the fact that the Easter Islanders are that that different from us. They cut down all the trees and eliminated their resources for their cultural values. And in the same way, America slowly destroys the Earth through industrialization in order to fulfill our cultural value, money. And as some of us read this book, thinking "Wow, they must have been ignorant to cut down all those trees for such an arbitrary cause" and wondering "Who carved the statues, why did they carve them at such effort, how did the carvers transport and raise such huge stone masses, and why did they eventually throw them all down?" (1), we can do the same as we look into the civilization that we have in America.

[Edit]:
While reading this chapter, I couldn't help but compare these stone statues to our money system. They are directly parallel in a sense that both of these objects reflect upon an individual's position and power over others within a society. People strive to obtain both of these objects as a symbol of wealth, power and self-importance. In addition, these things require a lot of labor to produce, which comes hand-in-hand with required resources to fuel it. However, in the end the stone statues will not provide us with what is necessary to survive, and neither will money. It seems that in both of our societies, we are spending our resources and time on such questionable objectives. And in both of our societies, it would appear that we have a mentality that resembles this statement: "All right, so you can erect a statue 30 feet high, but look at me: I can put this 12-ton pukao on top of my statue; you try to top that, you wimp!" (9).