The Beginning of Birth Pains
A lot's happened in 17 months, and events are just getting started.
It's been an eventful 17 months since the launch of Shatterpoints in January 2021. In those 17 months, the world’s changed dramatically. The seemingly impossible is now reality. Everything we thought we knew about the world is now up for questioning. And there's no sign events will slow down.
So where are we going with all this? Where is this chaos taking us? That's the question on everyone's mind. The answer is simple: we are witnessing the end of an era. The past 30 years of peace and prosperity are a historical anomaly. All we are witnessing is a reversion to the mean.
The reason the experts are incapable of understanding and navigating this present chaos is precisely due to the reason they’re experts. The modern university trains experts to think within a single, narrow field of knowledge. Graduate students are encouraged from day-one to “find their niche” within the greater field of knowledge. Universities intentionally silo expertise into quadrants and discourage the kind of “renaissance thinking” that made them famous in the first place. The result is experts are knowledgeable in only a single discrete, system.
Unfortunately for the experts, reality is comprised of multiple, interdependent dynamic systems. The consequence is experts are unable to process how exogenous shocks to a single system create ripple effects across multiple systems. Furthermore, experts lack perspective on how imperatives in other systems create constraints to action.
Understanding this quandary is key to unlocking the experts’ abysmal response to COVID-19.
Healthcare leaders sought to optimize only on the variable of zero-COVID infections. The policy of choice became lockdowns. Instead of halting COVID, lockdowns didn’t significantly alter the rate of spread. Additionally, lockdowns ruined the economy, destroyed the public’s mental health, and wrecked the educational outcomes of a generation.
Lockdowns are what happens when you let one group of experts rule.
That brings us to the future of globalization and modernity. The world is made up of multiple overlapping, dynamic systems. These systems include the economy, demographics, the environment, culture, government, technology, and security. Understanding how and where the systems interact to generate events is key to forecasting the future. In every system, there are a few fulcrums that, if pressured, can create a system-wide meltdown. That fulcrum is a shatterpoint.
Globalization is a highly complex, highly concentrated, highly interconnected, highly interdependent system that is overly optimized for efficiency, that is profit. This is a system that is highly fragile and lacks resiliency. Our experts looked at the system and said that it was very good because “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits."
The goal of globalization and modernity is to maximize wealth. Indeed, for a time, this system worked. It generated immense wealth, yet the wealth was not shared with the majority of humanity. Instead, the wealth was funneled into the hands of ultra-elites. No other institution is more indicative of elite decadence in the age of globalization than the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Held every year in Davos, Switerland, the WEF is a gathering of the world’s biggest companies and billionaires who congregate to discuss the future of humanity. But beneath the lip-service to human rights by companies employing child sweatshops is the clear desire to further leverage globalization to increase profits. Similar to healthcare experts’ singular focus on zero-COVID resulting in disastrous lockdowns, the singular focus of Davos elites on wealth maximization is the very reason globalization will not survive the decade.
Globalization was never something that was going to last. It is a system that requires maintenance by a single hegemonic power. It requires a superpower. The only nation on earth that can fulfill the hegemonic role required for the sustainability of globalization is the United States of America.
It is the United States that created and sustained globalization these past 30 years. Now, that unipolar moment is coming to an end. While the United States remains the world's preeminent power, its relative power is rapidly diminishing as evidenced by the rise of China, Russia's brazen invasion of Ukraine, and the continual chaos in the Middle East.
Over the past 17 months, I've highlighted three key elements of globalization and modernity: globalization's origins in the post-World War II order, Europe's attempt to escape tragedy through the EU, and China's rise as the world's factory. As the old order decays, revisionist powers such as Russia are attempting to carve out spheres of influence. Even this is just the beginning of birth pains.
These subjects cover only a fraction of the chaos unfolding before our eyes. From fertilizer shortages to a looming global food crisis to the rising threat of another financial meltdown, the threats to globalization and modernity are legion. Unfortunately for me, it’s impossible to cover all these events in the current format.
It's time for Shatterpoints to enter into a new era. At present, I tend to publish every couple of months. That's because every article is extensively researched and takes approximately 30 hours to write. To expedite the process, I’m changing some things.
First, you, the reader, can expect a greater frequency of shorter articles. These articles should be seen as standalone pieces meant to brief you on a topic.
Second, the long-form articles that tell the story of how we got here and where we’re going aren’t disappearing. You can expect a semi-normal publishing schedule for this style of articles to continue.
Finally, I want to announce a slight rebrand: Shatterpoints is becoming Shatterpoints Geopolitics. The reason for the change is simply due to search engine optimization. Shatterpoints has always been about geopolitics and changing the name to reflect that will help attract new readers.
What we’re experiencing isn't unprecedented. History tends to move in cycles, and today is no different. That isn't to say we’re not experiencing difficult times. There’s no question that we live in a dangerous and chaotic age. Nevertheless, we should recognize that there is a path forward. It is possible to predict where and why things will shatter. So buckle up and get ready, cause we ain't seen nothing yet.