Crazy Town
If it feels like the world’s going crazy, that’s because it is
If it feels like the world’s going crazy, that’s because it is.
Yesterday’s global order is collapsing. It’s taking that easy sense of peace and prosperity with it.
The world’s institutions have been broken for decades now. Economic, political, social institutions. Social contracts, economic measures, financial mechanisms, political parties. But now they are finally crumbling.
The result is a vacuum. What arises in the vacuum? You might think: newer, better things. But the truth is that in a vacuum, regress happens. Progress requires a base to springboard from.
Collapsing institutions means fewer, deteriorating public goods. What are the most important ones? Security, education, healthcare, transport. When people can’t depend on societies to provide them, they turn to whomever can. Or promises to. Maybe they just have to begin providing them themselves.
Hence, the rise of megachurches, madrasas, demagogues, homeschooling, survivalism, weird in between states like ISIS. It’s not just about “hope”. It’s about providing people what broken institutions don’t and can’t.
In the vacuum left by yesterday’s broken institutions are arising tribalism, fundamentalism, and extremism. There’s no safety in the ruins. But maybe there’s safety in the tribe, the rules, the gods.
So now we begin regressing to an older way of organising society. The newer way failed, or maybe was failed by poor leaders.
The old way is medieval, it’s feudal, dynastic, about blood, gold, caste. It’s the Trumps, Kardashians, Berlusconis at the top, neo serfs on demand to apps that pay them minimum wage for maximum pain in the middle, and the new untouchables at the bottom.
That’s where we’re heading.
That’s why the world feels crazy. Because it is. We’re taking giant leaps backwards in history, undoing decades of progress in days. Witness Brexit and Trump. We’re on the march backwards into a new feudal age.
It’s a bleak prognosis, I know. But now at least you do too.
Umair
London
July 2016
