Why did it go crazy in 1914?
How about 1517?
It’s been my contention for about 20+ years now that the 2nd decade of this century would see vast political shifts which possibly won’t sort themselves out for up to a century. And it’s a historical pattern we’ve seen before in the West:
Change the way people communicate and the world explodes sixty-odd years later.
60 years prior to the Protestant Reformation, which destroyed any hope of Christendom, the Printing Press was invented. The Reformation could not have happened without the press - Luther was, in many ways, the worlds first media sensation.
60 years prior to the madness which led to WW1, which destroyed any hope European Monarchs might have had of continuing in importance (and eventually destroyed the European’s control of the globe), the high speed rotary press was invented (as well as the telegraph and, in 1876, the telephone, but I think the rotary press is the big player in this one). The impact of the rotary press in 1847 allowed newspapers to become the dominant form of information for hundreds of millions. However, diffused ownership of multiple properties pushed individual agendas onto their readers, creating “bubbles” (even though they didn’t think of them this way) who were then primed… ala Fox News… to act on the burgeoning nationalist impulses. Here in America, Pulitzer and Hearst performed the same function that Murdoch (or Ailes) did at Fox: Put their spin on what happened, fuck the societal consequences. Do the same in Europe, and by 1914, we’re all ready to kick some nationalist ass.
60 years ago? DARPANET was founded. I doubt I need to go further into explaining how the internet… like the printing press, like the newspaper explosion of the 19th-century… has changed how people communicate, who they communicate with, and who they associate with.
Obviously, there are other forces which come into play, but the one thing that is common among the two biggest civilization-defining challenges the West has faced over the past half-millennium is the fact that the way people interacted with each other profoundly changed in the 60 years prior.
And that’s, imho, what you’re seeing today. The internet is rending society apart and will continue to do so until we, again, come to terms with the impact caused by this shift in communications and develop means and attitudes to handle this.
It won’t be easy: Europe went to war with itself from 1517-1648, then Europe involved the entire world in their 20th-century “civil war” of 1914-1945.
My guess is that, big picture historically-wise, we’re looking at the first stages of the ascendency of the East and the beginning of a slow, relative decline for the West. Future historians may date the beginning of this process back in 1991-92, when the USSR collapsed, but 2016 is a good guess too.
My biggest worry: We didn’t have nukes during the Reformation or WW1.
