As we witness what could be the beginnings of the collapse of the last remaining superpower, one has to wonder if the rest of the world isn’t royally screwed as well. After all, great civilizations are no longer isolated experiments. With that in mind, check out Jared Diamond’s talk on common characteristics of societies that collapse, with the sliver of a hope and a pinch of advice on how me might pull ourselves out of this one. Unfortunately, the parallels he draws to the United States (and western society in general) are circa 2003, which means you should multiply the ominous overtones in his talk by about a billion to bring them up to 2008’s standards.