The Four Trends of the 21st Century.

this Channel's got a bit of a reputation for being Doomer which means I'm always foreseeing doom and Terror in the future honestly that's entirely fair when I put out videos like this however it's not an entirely accurate view of what I think the future is going to be like yes I think some bad stuff's gonna go down pretty soon since the world system's fundamentally broken but I think everyone's going to end the 21st century significantly better off than how they started I think advances and improvements will be so great that in your old age you'll look back upon your Youth and wonder how you got by every Century has been dominated by a couple major trends that you could predict most of the important events that occurred in that Century by following a logic train starting from that trajectory this is a video that exists to tease out what I think that four dominant trends of the 21st century are going to be will make out a longer term more optimistic view of the world in 2100 than I 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project that can fit your schedule and skill level skillshare is designed to help you learn there are no ads and they're always launching new premium classes so you can explore something new and focus on building skills that will last a lifetime no matter who you are you can benefit by visiting skillshare and finding something that interests you right now skillshare is offering the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description below a one month free trial download skillshare so you can start exploring your creativity now I know these Trends actually exist since we've seen their predictive ability looking backwards across history most predictions of the future go horribly wrong this is since people take a trend that's occurred over the last generation or often most of their lives without understanding what's causing it and just have it go for another generation just harder and faster the truth is that that almost never happens for example you've got predictions of cannibalism and complete Global overpopulation coming from the 1970s since that generation beforehand had seen the fastest population growth ever up to that point in history these predictions failed by missing two things the first of which was the Green Revolution which turned out to be one of the most important events in history the world's population more than doubled from 1970 to the present but everyone turned out to be better fed and Global Forest lands actually extended by more than 15 percent since the 1990s this was since agricultural productivity went but by a massive margin the second thing was that wealthier countries have less kids and because of that as the world got wealthier there were less kids totals the population problem ended up solving itself in the long term and now we're going to actually see global population decline over the next couple decades the predictions that do work and we'll reference a couple of these across the video were those that correctly teased out a long-term Trend as in one lasting in centuries rather than a single generation and understood its broader significance across the whole of society an easy example of this from the 20th century was John Brunner a Sci-Fi writer from the 1960s who wrote about a 2010s America run by its first black president named abomi in which a Soviet Union collapse and was replaced by China as America's Main arrival in a new Cold War at the same time homosexuality has been normalized in gay marriage legalized random acts of violence like school shootings take place people use video conferences and headphones prices have risen six-fold since the 1960s as inflation's gotten way worse a wave of terrorism takes place short-term hookups often replace marriage and long-term relationships marginalization of tobacco well marijuana has been legalized in a lot of spots Rising real estate prices and a global population of 8 billion if you couldn't tell all of that really happened with all of that going on we could start the assumption that John Brunner is a time traveler which honestly I'd consider reasonable but realistically he teased out two Trends across the 20th century really well and I don't even know if he did this on a conscious level but those two Trends were population growth which increases competition and decline in traditional religion if you want more explanation here's a video I made talking about this the predictive trends of the 20th century were number one the spread of the Industrial Revolution and thus political power away from Britain and France to other larger regions in the west number two that a kind of traditional religions and their replacement by humanist philosophies like liberalism communism fascism Etc three waves of population growth starting the century in the wealthiest countries and ending in the poorest and four Total Wars subsuming larger Nations into Mega Empire buyers and finally reaching mutually assured destruction you could have predicted the events in the 20th century from these points in this video Just as I have four points in the 20th century I've tried my best and I have four guesses for what I think the long-term trajectories of the 21st century are going to be they're probably not what you think and I'm intrigued to see what your Collective reactions in the comments are before we start I have said this before and I'm going to say it again my job here is basically betting against God and so the chances of this actually turning out correctly are pretty low but this is my honest attempt and let's see what happens and let's work from there number one greater wealth much as people in the first world often like to flagellate themselves into pressing the third world and starving children in Africa things are going pretty well in the third world the last 40 years have been the era of the greatest economic growth ever in world history nearly 2 billion people mostly in Asia but also in Eastern Europe and Latin America have been lifted out of poverty since the end of the Cold War if you want evidence that Communism works worse than cabin federalism here it is screaming at you you see loads of this in China look at the city of Shenzhen for example it was a fishing Village 30 years ago and now it's this similarly this whole side of the river in Shanghai was literally a field 40 years ago there are 800 million hungry people in the world and 2 billion obese many of them in the third world the only places where people legitimately starve are those in countries where their governments want them to for political reasons like Yemen or South Sudan it's so nice to go to a place like Mexico and see lots of obese people or a generation or so ago you'd see far more thin I do think the third world will see a massive crisis in the decades to come mostly due to a combination of globalization and their political and social structures not being able to maintain the massive population and economic growth they've seen in the past few decades sort of like why World War One happened in Europe but I don't think that'll be able to hold them back for the whole Century the sources of greater wealth being capitalism and technological progress are both stable everyone serious has realized that capitalism best economic system and anyone who hasn't will be crushed by those who have also the technological revolutions that are almost certainly about to happen in things like manufacturing ability biotech which is immense potential Agriculture and disease and green energy will benefit the third world I once write a prediction saying that the average Bangladeshi at the end of the century will be as wealthy as the average Dutchman today and I don't know if that's true but it's definitely within the realm of possibility these events will also be pronounced in the first world where advances in productivity and Technology will probably result in your descendants living lives like those of the pre-industrial aristocracy people will work far less hours and will spend the rest of the time on war sport art politics or working more hours to get more money remember the First World countries are democracies and in the US's case a very well-armed one and so dystopian systems in which a tiny Elite controls the factories and gives welfare scraps to population politically won't work out because of either Revolution or voting out the government as people become wealthier and the cost of bottom Mt or Goods collapses due to automation people being the status seeking creatures they are will buy luxury goods which will become a larger and larger percentage of the economy people will take pride in buying handcrafted artisanal Goods to show that they're not poor Goods which still Source via the gig economy wealthy populations tend to have less kids and the world's population will stabilize we're actually seeing this happen in real time with global population collapsing faster than anyone saw coming India or a poor country's birth rate today is 2.2 or where Americans was in the 1970s and their birth rates collapsing faster than America's ever did a lot of the demographic Trends we see in the future are literal black holes that just can't be solved for countries like Germany Italy China and Japan their population structures have so few young people that they actually can't be turned around and they'll leave the century with around half the population they have now likewise the social collapse of a country like China will precipitate a political crisis such as a war that will result in possibly lowering a lot of their neighbors populations as well in short I think the world's population might stabilize the end of this Century billions of people lower than it is today something we forget is that population in the pre-industrial world was generally pretty stable for thousands of years Egypt had the same population when Napoleon arrived as it did around the birth of Christ in England in the 15th Century's population wasn't that much higher than it was during the Iron Age you should view the last 200 years as a bizarre formation of an industrial World which involved massive population growth that will eventually stabilize having the world's population stabilized will change so many things that we just assume are normal currency will be stable or deflationary as is always the case in eras of population stability certainly the only driver of economic growth will be technological progress Wars without people really having immense skin in the game since no one's going to starve will be fought less brutally in more controlled ceremonial fashion number two The Clash of civilizations people often talk about China down in The Next Century or this being the Asian Century I don't believe this first of all it presumes China continues its meteoric economic growth that it's had over the next 40 years which I don't think it will do due to China's massive demographic social and political problems that largely go unsaid since the Chinese government doesn't want to talk about them similarly it presumes the decline of America which really has no evidence to back at considering America has remained a stable quarter of the world's economy since the 1960s and America's continued cultural and technological predominance I think the best model for politics in the 21st century comes from Sam Huntington's Clash of civilizations a book written in the 1990s that said the world after the Cold War would be dominated by the conflict between different civilizations he was laughed at the time but he was actually able to accurately predict China becoming America's Main rival Islamic terrorism against the West the Iranians and North Koreans pushing for a nuclear bomb India becoming an American Ally in Western countries closing off immigration turns out although people consciously don't think it the world is becoming more and more dominant by the struggles between civilizations I find a couple things compelling in The Clash of civilizations model the first of which is that it doesn't presuppose a single country will rule the world which considering how wealth in the industrial revolution is spreading seems unlikely it was easy for Britain to have a massive World Empire when only Northwestern Europe and Northeastern North America were industrialized however in a world in which Indonesia has a larger economy than Germany that's just not possible lots of the assumptions of the modern world are built off superiority of the West that could no longer be assumed Marxism liberalism and fascism for example were all formed in roughly Northwestern Europe it'll be intriguing to figure out what the philosophies educated Indians or Chinese will form pulling on their own extremely rich intellectual Traditions the geography of Asia which is split and divided by Massive deserts jungles grasslands and the like predisposes the continent towards division not Unity there should be an Indian Islamic and East Asian Bloc rather than a single big Empire once those blocks gain confidence they'll pull on their historic roots to form their identity we're already seeing this to a large degree with turkey going to Neo ottoman India's Hindu Nationalist and China hearkening back to their dynasties similarly having different politically divided civilizations that work together as a civilization has been the norm across history look at jihads and Crusades or how the greater India is spread across Asia the world will in a lot of ways return to the Middle Ages in which there will be a western Far Eastern Islamic and Indian Bloc possibly with large Empires as their Cornerstone States like the U.S China India or the Turkish caliphate America facing broadly civilizational threats will double down in its Western identity becoming aggressively liberal and as we'll talk about in the next few Trends possibly having a new Reformation I wonder about Europe however who seems to have had its Spirit broken by the world wars and as little desire to take pride in its nuitive identity unlike the Asian countries my guess is that Europe's pulled into a western severe Kicking and Screaming by the Americans and Europe adopts a more revived Americanized Western culture number 3 Humanity gains the power of gods and realizes that they don't want it the 21st century is going to give us many Godlike capabilities I mean this in the sense of power equaling that of the ancient Greek gods in some ways we already have it with stuff like flying and immediate communication via cell phones however we'll likely gain the ability to create life mess with the human brain extend our lifetimes and colonize space however the problem we're gonna reach is the left of filter between the Technologies we actually want to bring into the world and will improve the condition of the human race and those that won't and we should taboo or show no interest in I'm not a technologist I'm a historian but I talk to a lot of technologists and it's always interesting to see them go on about some new technology to which my reaction is that sounds entirely useless but they seem to take great interest in it for being new take neurolink which people in Tech continually say is a game changer technology that supposedly lets people mentally communicate between their brains and software however all the modern science with neuralink suggests that it only works for medical patients like schizoids or to control Limbs and can't read thoughts any attempt to do so ends up destroying and hurting the brain similarly take AI which is a massive cult Community behind it however from everything I've read AI can be very good at single tasks but it will never be able to make decisions in the real world which is just too complicated ai's actual practical application the world besides for single tasks is close to nothing after years of digging I've basically found the desire for AI comes from a nerd of wish that we could develop something more logical than human thinking but truth be told you don't want logical thinking for decisions you want someone who's capable of weighing emotionally everyone they love and how much they care about Minor trade-offs those are only things you know we've been trying to push for technology to solve our problems almost as a push against realizing the things that make us happy or the things that we've had the whole time like friends good food nature being a good person and family and of course technology has changed the game in some key ways fighting a war with tanks is different than that with chariots and at the same time it has been people have happier where having your son not die of malaria makes your life generally happier yes technology will improve our lives immensely over the next Century but once we're living like nobility and have the ability to genetically engineer Demons What Drive will we have to really have more technological progress across the whole board it wouldn't surprise me for reach a technological equilibrium for industrial civilization similar to that agricultural societies had and that the life of a peasant in the Neolithic wasn't that different in basic work as that of a 19th century French peasant humans are going to have to draw lines at what technology they want to approach and which ones they don't sort of like how we've learned to be very careful with nuclear weapons and poison gas take space travel and colonization which will probably widely considered to be a universal good on the other side since no one gets hurt and involves spreading human life we'll probably taboo the creation or editing of life human genetic engineering in the search for immortality both of these things have been marked as Divine hubris and myths from cultures of around the world would eternally contain more wisdom than we'd like to believe since they would generally involve more wisdom on humans part than we really have whenever humans try to change a Region's ecosystem at horrifically backfires and almost all social engineering programs also fail tarot play this is why totalitarianism almost always burns out quickly in that no one's smart enough to control an entire Society from above the rebuttal to this is why don't we engineer ourselves to be smarter to be able to make these decisions which is missing the main point that we don't know enough about the brain to do that and probably never will we're going to have to realize that there are technologies that we can use but we're not wise enough to use responsibly these will become taboo any country that works on them will be crushed by the other members the balance of power the world would ascended the Collide of a new nausea regime we've already seen it will continue to see this in war and that makes sense given that military technology tends to be ahead of Civilian we realize the total war wasn't worth it with nuclear weapons it will have a series of smaller Revelations with things like genetic engineering life extension in the however as an example mutually assured destruction won't mean the end of war war is necessary to reset political realities but it does mean the end of Total War war in the future will be much more limited with smaller objectives like it has been for most of human history once people are richer and realize they're still not happy religion will take a new role in importance in society as a guide to better or happier life people will focus on community art and the like we'll probably eventually realize the thing that would make us the happiest would be a return to a more primitive lifestyle like that our ancestors lived in Intimate small communities not being sexually repressed working less with nature around us and ceremonies and rituals to Mark the passing of Our Lives number four populism in the Internet history has been divided between centralized and decentralized ages for a comparison this is a map of Europe in the year 100 A.D and this is a map of 1300. in the first era giant armies of the main way power was held together while in the second power was held by Lords and Tiny castles divided up the land the 20th century in Eros massive European colonial empires and which eventually resulted in a world with two and then one superpowers was the ultimate era of centralized Empires at the end of the century for the first and probably only time in history power was centralized in a single world superpower of the United States however at the same time the defeats of European and French forces in Vietnam and Algeria followed by the rise International terrorism created a world in which the nation-state and the hyper power was Far weaker now we're in a world in which second-rate powers like France and turkey are competing over Libya without the U.S really caring are we in the 17th century for Christ's sake the world since 1500 has been that of the gunpowder Revolution and which due to the cheap cost of guns big armies mattered and so the countries which mobilized the biggest armies won this was a process that resulted in the world wars in the US becoming the sole world power however due to mutually assured destruction Total War is no longer feasible with perhaps one horrifying exception to shake us into making this true the future won't be waged in Total Wars but more limited ones this weakens the power of broad centralized governments similarly the internet allows large amounts of communication without governments which was far more difficult before digital communities can form outside of the nation the reason for example I'm so confident in Islamic caliphate will form is that so many Muslims on the internet want it and would be willing to coordinate it the effects of the internet will be massively positive in real terms the whole purpose of the modern world has been to transform people into cogs and some broader planners scheme destroying everything else that differentiate someone or some region don't believe me the left following the interests of a bureaucratic government pushes against nationality dominant ethnic groups femininity and women masculinity and Men the military police family values of religion and anything that would prevent a left-wing bureaucrat for making Broad Social changes over millions the right normally representing business interests pushes against the environment unions and local customs and ways of life you can view the modern international order as built by corporations and governments that push for size and efficiency in an exchange Crush individual identity large corporations work with governments to have regulations to weaken smaller competition regulate every aspect of life between child rearing Leisure or business and have a single encompassing worldview that of reaganite capitalism combined with social justice exported around the world this is why it can travel around the world and go to cities that look exactly the same and more people have the same ideas the internet allows people to organize independently of these large organizations in a more democratic and populist way in America both right and left have been torn up by political movements driven by the internet we don't need big corporations as much when the gig economy allows people to be connected with each other independently with zoom people can move to the countryside and work remotely thus deprioritizing larger cities people can organize into intimate communities of like-minded people and the Internet by democratizing communication will democratize society and allow more local power democratizing life will make it more crude especially by our modern standards if the internet's the main form of communication people will care less about spelling or punctuation for example in a society where everyone's watched internet porn from a young age it would end up being socially acceptable and probably even educational material on how to be good at sex there is this whole school of cryptocurrency thought called the sovereign individual which talks about this whole process and takes it to the extreme that centralized governments won't exist anymore which I don't believe governments like the U.S that can exert real military power and have a national identity will continue to exist without problem however for countries like Cameroon or Bolivia that don't really have either of those I'm not that sure the internet will allow some countries like China to be more oppressive in the short term due to better technology but such regimes collapse in the long term while competing with free countries since they run against human nature a tyrannical communist China would collapse similarly to how Chinese tyrannies have collapsed before the main intellectual force of the world over the last last 500 years has been the University universities have been where ideas inventions and in the last few decades the leadership class have come out of however universities have been corrupt due to this Monopoly charging exorbitant fees pushing their own ideology above the truth and not encouraging genius or breakthroughs however the internet has broken the University's grip on knowledge take this channel in which I a 20 year old College Dropout with no credentials whatsoever have an audience approaching a million a month more than almost any Professor religions appeals the masses and philosophies to administrators eras of strong centralized governments like the Roman or Chinese Empires were those of philosophies like stoicism epicureanism Confucianism or legalism while those of weak centralized governments like the Middle Ages or most of Indian history had Christianity Islam and Hinduism the administrators like to fool themselves that philosophies are smarter since they're more logical but realistically Christianity is a far more useful guide to human nature than communism or epicurean them ever could be the fact that Christianity has held up multiple Civilizations for two thousand years while every humanist ideology we've mustered in the last few centuries collapses after a few decades to be indicative of this I'm mostly a history guy but I read all the social sciences and it's very interesting when you see that one field of social sciences doesn't read another economists never read enough history for their own good in my opinion however it's really interesting to see the theology always gets ignored since religion isn't cool it's funny to see profound truths get written in Theology and then be totally ignored by the rest of society I'm surprised people haven't realized that there really isn't a contradiction between science and religion science is no idea why the Big Bang happened why there's a force of chaos or order or Division and unity that operates across the whole universe's history in both physics and psychology you hit a black wall of mystery whether with the unconscious Dark Matter String Theory or the like you know who's been saying that for thousands of years religion most of the things people find objectionable in traditional religions like abortion or attitudes towards sex and nudity are never or barely mentioned in the bible but are later editions the god of the New Testament doesn't care if you like sex it's also interesting to see social sciences like anthropology and psychology come along to the principles of traditional religion like not lying helping the poor marrying and the like are supported by science Jordan Peterson is the easiest example of this religion is the why things happen in science is the how the 21st century will have more power than humans have ever had before and we'll start to ask why the 21st century will be a populist and religious one what a faultist and thanks for watching if you enjoyed that video please like comment subscribe or stay tuned for additional content or alternatively check out my Instagram Twitter or my patreon where I've got the first couple hundred Pages written of my cultural history of America and history of the world as always thanks so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: Whatifalthist

Views: 553,912

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2021, adas

Id: 00l-FWEm1pU

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 30 2021