Yes, few indeed remember the last Industrial Age crisis. But you still have to remember that none have lived through an Information Age crisis. Nukes make all out war not cost effective, so the autocrats are tippy toeing. Putin is teetering on the edge of losing his war and his status. China has impossible economic problems that make a sea war with the US seem feasible. Trump is in the process of creating our own economic collapse to rival the others. The Middle East is being the Middle East. The Jews have embraced racist genocide, which was the whole excuse for conquest of Muslim land in the first place. The Muslims haven’t the gumption for revolution against their autocrats.FullMoon wrote: Tue Jun 17, 2025 7:18 pm Life as normal became war life as normal. They were lucky to emerge into a better world. We don't necessarily think that's a high probability.
Fourth Turning crisis theory put together a pretty good idea of how things flowed during the Information Age. Autocrats thought their military cultures could impose on industrial cultures and found they were wrong. (Napoleon and Hitler are the classic examples.) That lesson may or may not hold this time around. What is newer is that the economic collapse(s) are happening all around. (Trump, Xi, Putin.). Going to war during an economic collapse will be the new thing. Last time, war was the way out of the economic collapse. While I don’t see an invasion of the US across the Atlantic or Pacific, continuing the other conflicts may seem necessary for various autocrats to cling to power. One possibility is an EMP burst, a high altitude nuke knocking out considerable electronic and power infrastructure, making the economic collapses even worse.
But we are definitely treading new ground. The best resolution would be deciding that racism and conquest are counterproductive. I’m not holding my breath. You have to prove the theories wrong before you get rid of them.