I think this current wave of low social cohesion and authoritarianism is caused by recent technological advances. Indeed, this phenomena I'm about to describe is a precursor of war, but the causal relationship is the inverse of your suspicions. And I think it can also be fixed by other recent technological advances. Here's why and how:
The Internet and social media in its current form makes it easier for social groups to get larger and more intellectually and ideologically homogenous. As these groups get larger, it becomes harder for individuals to communicate across groups or think for themselves because there are various in-group moderation mechanisms (filtering, banning, ranking, deplatforming, cancel culture, etc). Eventually, the echo chambers become large enough to fight over who gets to run a nation's government. The winner turns into a government that moderates its people (like it always did before it became the government). Multiple such governments emerge around the world. This happened in cycles in the past as well, but modern technology facilitates the process.
To prevent this, we must realize two democratic principles simultaneously: "one shall have the freedom to decide what one sees and hears" and "one shall have the freedom to express whatever they like". It wasn't possible to realize both principles simultaneously in the past without a central authority because if someone is doing something in a public space, you cannot selectively filter them out. If you cover your eyes and ears, you block out not just that person, but everyone else as well. So we came up with rules for behavior in public spaces and wrote them into law. This didn't drastically raise the probability of a democratic society turning authoritarian because there were physical limits on practical group size. It was very hard to rally a large group of intellectually homogenous people. But the Internet and social media completely broke this safeguard imposed by physics. Now, echo chambers form naturally and grow rapidly.
To fix this, we must normalize not moderating or filtering content online in any centralized manner. Instead, we build user-configurable client-side content filters and ranking algorithms so that each individual can decide what they see and post, but nobody can decide what anybody else sees or posts.
We need to replace server-side content filters and ranking algorithms with offline solutions controlled by each individual on their own device. Get rid of likes and dislikes, and get rid of server-curated feeds. Have the server send a raw RSS feed of everything posted in the past day (or whatever time window, sparsely randomly sampled if there's too much) at once, then get it ranked and filtered on the user's device based on the user's preferences and viewing history, and then fetch the actual media associated with those feed entries.
This will, somewhat counterintuitively, increase social cohesion by limiting the inter-group rift between individuals and prevent the formation of large echo chambers. People will be more likely to engage with eachother in good faith. Authoritarian patterns will be more likely to naturally dissolve.
There is no longer an echo chamber besides the one a person creates for themselves, which people may choose to do.
It would speed up the rate at which individuals become delusional. But once a certain divergence threshold is reached, they get corrected by reality. The proposed solution hypercharges this delusion-correction process and contains it at the individual level so that it's less likely to grow to the nation-state level where most of the violence and oppression is siloed.
In a democratic society where each person gets a vote, individual delusions of this sort cancel eachother out like random noise. What ends up being voted into law will be what people want in common.
Also, people will gradually realize that being delusional is disadvantageous regardless of what goals they have, so they'll want to filter less and less over time.
Allow me to make one important distinction I forgot to do in the previous reply: there is a difference between conflicts that arise from delusions vs conflicts that arise from preferences. The former is a subset of the latter. We can prevent escalation of the former with client-side filtering and ranking, but the latter is a force of nature. Two people that share an identical model of reality may decide to take different actions anyway. Minimizing echo chambers aligns people's reality models, but it doesn't align their preferences. So while people will want to do less ranking and filtering over time, they will still want to set a non-zero base level of ranking and filtering for themselves, and congregate into homogenous groups, not because they want to be delusional, but because they're fundamentally different.
We’re definitely in the pre-war era. It’s like when Britain was trying to negotiate with Hitler while rearming in the background.
China is going to attack pearl harbour in the hopes that a sudden unexpected attack will cripple the pacific fleet and knock America out of the war. It won’t work, we’ll go through hell again. But every time these places think it will work, and they don’t factor in the fact that they are completely reliant on foreign trade for their economy.
Russia is pretty much in war economy now, they have no choice but to escalate and invade Eastern Europe. They have no chance of winning, but that never matters to crazy people.
>they are completely reliant on foreign trade for their economy.
If China cut trade ties with the US, which country do you think will still be able to produce everything it needs? People like to think of China as just a source of cheap consumer goods, but we are much more reliant on them than that. Every power plant has Chinese components that keep it functioning. Every farm, automobile, communication network, aircraft, factory.. they all rely on Chinese components and equipment. The list touches every facet of modern American life.
China could make the US unrecognizable within 5 years, without ever launching a single missile
That stuff is also made in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Phillipenes, Korea, India, etc etc etc.
Things would get a little more expensive. We are already seeing that with Trump's trade policies. But if the west-aligned world stopped trading with China their entire economy would collapse overnight, with mass unemployment.
It is a shame that Trump is deadset on alienating all of our natural allies in this conflict - especially those in the apac region.
That stuff is also made in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Phillipenes, Korea, India, etc etc etc.
If things get to that level of 'touchy' what makes you think shipping through that area wouldn't be interfered with? South Korea, Japan and arguably the Philippines are the main countries that wouldn't be going through areas that China regularly tries to claim or at least exercise authority over.
China does not have that kind of navy. Maybe it could build one, eventually. It will take decades... And it isn't just construction, it is the training and procedures and culture.
China hasn't fought a war in anyone's living memory. That is a hard place to fight nearly the whole world from.
Only in economic terms. Sure, China would face a massive shortfall and would have huge unemployment if it suddenly stopped exporting to the USA. But that's not the same world of trouble as suddenly being unable to get important technology and parts, which is what the US would face. And China is really not reliant on imports from the USA - especially not in time of war (that is, they might have a problem selling things legally without paying various royalties to US companies - but that doesn't matter anymore in a world War).
I don't see what the mutual dependency is. They sent us cheap shit for a few decades, we gave them dollars in return. Our inflation rate was super low, as we were exporting our inflation. We slowly lost the ability to make stuff domestically. That system is now crumbling, China is using their exports to buy gold instead. We are left with a hollowed out economy based on services and finance. The DOD is having a big problem building ships and submarines. Nuclear power plants can't be built affordably. In some ways, China is in the same position as the USA was during WW2, the world's factory.
I think that was the idea, but in practice I think that China successfully outmaneuvered the United States by taking advantage of the short-sighted greed of our businesses leaders.
They are now the manufacturing capital of the world, and our position of being the preeminent consumer in the world lasts only as long as our consumers can afford to purchase things.
These are long lived relationships -- they may have outmaneueverd at some points, and also restrained at others.
China runs a precarious political situation which is only as strong as the country is economically stable - which currently it is veering to unstable.
It goes without saying the US is also in a precarious situation - it is much more publicized due to the nature of the US airing all its dirty laundry publicly.
It’s interesting how there is this pre-war vibe going on but when you describe the actual predictions, it seems extremely unlikely. It feels more like a phenomenon created through the internet than actual pre-war anything.
The china thing is very out there - but I’d see them going for the push in Taiwan and things escalating there.
My main concern as a European is Russia. It is a historical truth that once a country goes through the process of starting a war economy it doesn’t usually dissolve or sit idle - conflict is going to happen there.
For America, watching from the outside, a civil war seems much more likely than direct war with china.
A war with China will do massive damage to the European and world economies, though, even if Europe stays entirely out of it. China more or less stops exporting (and importing); the economies of South Korea and Japan immediately contract 25% or more; Russia faces massive and nearly infinite demand for its resources from China; oil states in the Middle East would face massive price volatility followed by a collapse in demand and a loss of 50% of their government revenues; and every two bit nation in the world would decide now is the time to pursue revanchist feuds since everyone who could object is otherwise occupied.
For America, watching from the inside, this is highly unlikely. The worst case scenario for what's going on right now would be something more akin to the Troubles in Ireland than a full-on civil war for any number of reasons.
I don't know about parent's prediction regarding China but a major war between Israel and Iran is upcoming this year or early next year, which will involve United States by definition.
We are likely in pre-war era right now, dismissing it as "internet phenomenon" is shortsighted.
>no choice but to escalate and invade Eastern Europe.
They can barely hold on to Eastern Ukraine, them taking the entirety of Ukraine is not likely at all given that they have had to slog for many years just to take and hold one small part of the country.
If they can’t even take all of Ukraine, I don’t think it’s very likely they try to attack any more of Europe.
Or one could look it the the other way around: the 50 countries, more or less, (Europe + US), that fight with the hands of Ukraine, as proxies, still haven't been able to defeat ONE Russia.
And despite of 23k of sanctions they've imposed on Russia, which is the absolute record by a looooooong margin on its own.
Europe is pretty much in war economy now, they have no choice but to escalate and invade Russia as NATO. They have no chance of winning, but that never matters to crazy people.
And you conveniently forgot that Hitler was from Germany - Europe. And he was the one who invaded USSR - Russia. Not the other way around. As well as he, indirectly, invaded China - by the help of Japan.
This might be the wrong place to ask these questions, but this comment caused me to think about the situation. Russia and/or Putin has been sold to me as "crazy" since the 90s. I don't really believe that, and presume it's because it's an explanation for their behavior which doesn't require America to consider how seriously we've been dicking over Russia. This is not to say Russia wouldn't dick us if they could (they most certainly would).
The Ukrainian war has been presented to me as a mad man trying to take over the world a la Hitler. I think it's more complicated and concerns about NATO expansion, the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, and Russia controlling warm water naval access make sense as motivations for the war, even though they are also be tools of propaganda. It seems clear that Russia believed they had the opportunity to establish themselves as a great power once again alongside China and the US in the "new multipolar world" they harp about.
My question is this: In light of this information, why has the Ukrainian conflict become seemingly (based on resources allocated and increasingly provocative drone incursions into NATO territories) existential for Russia? Are the us sanctions crippling long term without Ukrankan resources? Why are they willing to sacrifice so much if they already have Crimea free and clear?
The current Russian regime believes in sphere of influence, and they view Ukraine, the baltics, at least some parts eastern europe, and probably more as a natural part of their sphere of influence.
This crashes with the western view where countries and populations have a right to self determination. Some of the countries that Russia want to fall under their sphere are also members of the EU, which make this even more problematic.
Seen from Moscow, EU and western countries have encroached on their turf and this is a problem for them. Seen from the western side, this is wrong, and if Russia is such a bad neighbor that its neighbor join defensive alliances to get out from under their thumb, that is their own fault, and the way the world is supposed to work.
Russia also has a geographic vulnerability where there is no geographic chokepoints from at least Poland and straight to Moscow, which historically has given Russia problems.
Give this, there is actually a rational for what Russia is doing, personally I think it is a bad rational, but there is logic in the madness, even if from my perspective, it is based on a deeply wrong world view.
> This crashes with the western view where countries and populations have a right to self determination.
It’s really time to retire this type of statement. For example, are you aware the CIA or US government has officially acknowledged its involvement, or declassified documents pertaining to coups, overthrows, and assassinations in Iran, the Congo, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, Afghanistan?
Maybe this enlightened point of view is promoted by Western academics and (some) think tank types. But that is not how Western governments have been acting for at least the past 75 years.
It's the idea that fraudulent elections in former Soviet states were not merely the result of fed-up populations, but were actually western backed conspiracies with the aim of eroding the Russian sphere of influence.
Because they thought they could take Ukraine in one week, so why not? And when they realized the mistake it's impossible to back down without losing face and life by the hand on the next leadership. So yes, it's existential, but not for Russia the country. Frankly who cared about Russia and who will care about it again if it goes back into its borders?
Putin is a typical strong man/tribal leader: his support depends on his machismo (it's something Trump tries very hard to emulate with his constant punching down). The problem is that strong men don't lose wars. Putin knows that conceding defeat in Ukraine will bring about his downfall in Russia.
Putin's goals are not peace, they are restoring the soviet union (his vision of what it should have been, not what it ever was). All call that crazy. That should not be confused with insane: he has a sharp mind, just he has turned it to things that I consider crazy to consider.
Ukraine matters to NATO because they are turning more and more to our classical liberal values of freedom, and that is something NATO wants to encourage in general. (in general - note that Turkey and Hungary are part of NATO that don't want to encourage this, and there are other countries not sure)
We can only guess why Russia/Putin thinks Ukraine is existential to Russia. Our best guess is because they were a historical part of the Soviet Union that they are trying to restore. Putin cannot fulfill his vision without Ukraine. NATO countries like Latvia were also part of the Soviet union and so we expect they are next.
At this point authoritarian pushes are the best case scenario - I’m fearing it’s preparation for wartime.