OBSERVATION:
In my lifetime, I've seen what was once a functional global industrial economy morph itself into something else. After considerable contemplation, I don't think its replacement has a single real name, but I regret to admit that I lack the requisite degree of gallows humor to refer to it at this point as an "economy."
This seems to be largely based on a criminal con-game whose predicate is the maintenance of the socioeconomic status-quo, especially as regards continuing &/or accelerating concentration of capital resources - OR ELSE.
RELEVANT POINT 1:
It is a very parlous error to misperceive a psychopatholgy as an ordinary dysfunction. Prime example: if the current anti-egalitarian capital-vector requires the total decimation of all growth of the world's middle class since WW2, as well as the massively enhanced misery & death of the underclass, then the regrettable necessity will be undertaken by its benefactors with heads hung low & crocodile tears distilled with equal parts megalomania & cognitive dissonance - fortunately, astronomical dividends are quick to soften the metaphysical blow.
Feudalism Chic, dead ahead!
RELEVANT POINT 2:
Armies truly are gangs with flags - & they've never been either as ideologically slutty or as hard-up for fresh cash in history as they are right now. The syergistic interaction of this uncomfortable contemporary truism with the aforementioned post-economic nihilist-kleptocratic tendencies of the elite does not exactly inspire a song in the heart & a rise in the pants.
One looks for a major non-entropic influence to counter this in our current age - & sees modern-day religion, corporate high-tech & Pop Culture, each on their respective streetcorners shimmying their arses to beat the band in its place. Unfortunately it's painfully self-apparent that this dilemma will accept no substitutes, & the odds of getting a second chance are zero.
The parties responsible for this gruesome synergy can pull it off due in no small part to the tendency of the general public to either shrug it away, give thanks that they still get to lick a few crumbs from Daddy Warbucks' floor, or accuse anyone pointing it out of being a severe buzzkill - & ironically, that quite mundane & reasonable-seeming ambivalent reaction seems to bear an increasingly excellent probability of transforming said synergy into a headshot to human civilization itself.
CODA:
Not every international culture suicides itself, but the phenomenon is hardly rare.
The passengers have to want off this ride badly enough to actually go.
Then they have to be ready, able & willing to build a good ride.
