That's a really interesting article. Though I will say Turchin's ideas about trying to apply general laws to Human history aren't new or unique. Marxists and Whig historians have been arguing for more or less the same thing for a very long time. And the concept of "mathematizing" history sounds like Marxist historians' reliance on economic and material data for their arguments. Nevertheless an interesting article.
Yeah, I don't doubt that the 2020s will not be an improvement over the 2010s, especially given the aftermath of COVID-19, but you should never trust people who say they've figured everything out and can model human behavior and predict the future. There are people who constantly predict recessions and The Downfall of America, and if enough people pick enough years, then eventually one of them will be correct when bad things happen.
But I seriously fail to see how the current period is somehow worse than many other periods in our history. We are nowhere near the levels of division seen before the Civil War. We're still not in the levels of polarization and engagement seen in Gilded Age (but we are close, and that's indicative). The past 50 years were a fairly stable and quiet period, and that's ending, but it's not the first time we've gone through turbulent, divided periods.
The last 50 years also saw the end of the prosperity of the Post-war period. If you haven't noticed it getting worse, you haven't been paying attention. Letting income inequality manifest to this height is a bubble that's bound to pop. Covid and it's horrifically bad response only accelerated a trend . Other countries have done better with social welfare but America as frozen piss iceberg in the world's ocean will flood many lands with its inevitable melt.
Yes, I was talking about political engagement being so low. Now that it's gotten bad enough, the relative quietness and stability of the past 50 years is breaking down faster and faster. We had enough inertia to get us into the 2000s, but since the Great Recession, the economic and social divide have gotten much worse, much quicker.
It actually seems to me political engagement is at all times high in the United States.
