the problem and the coming pathological manifestations

What used to keep people relatively healthy and satisfied was the support of local community life (mostly tribes and villages).

Local community support was gradually decimated by the rise and then increasing domination of life by the kingdoms, empires, and nation-states over millennia; and then almost fully obliterated by hypermodernity since the time of the industrial revolution.

Which now leaves us with this globalized social reality:

About ten percent of people (800 million) thrive. They are relatively well-off. Life expectancy: 85.

About forty percent (3+ billion) cope with the difficult conditions of hypermodernity enough as to attain a modicum of satisfaction, enough as to stay fairly healthy. Life expectancy: 75.

About thirty-five percent (3 billion) are considerably less than healthy and satisfied but endure without much disturbing the peace (“lives of quiet desperation”). Life expectancy: 65.

About fifteen percent (1.2 billion) can’t cope. They suffer from dysfunctionality and chronic ill-health (physical and mental). Life expectancy: 55.

Nature does not care that over a billion humans suffer from considerable psychopathology and are vectors of sociopathology. But the effect on human society is problematic.

Over the next hundred years the total number of people will approach ten billion. It will likely peak there because that’s too many, in many respects. The proportion of the dysfunctional, dissatisfied, and miscreant will increase to around twenty percent. From that population of two billion will come pathologies that will overrun the rest. We already see the rest alarmed about the very beginnings of what will become a tidal wave flooding out of the failed states, out of the general misery brewing at the periphery. This is one manifestation of what James Howard Kunstler calls “The Long Emergency” and John Michael Greer calls “The Long Descent.”

It won’t be pretty, but some who are still OK (and appropriately chastened) might relate to it as liberatory. Some will view it as a reason to, an excuse to, abandon the odious hypermodernity which has been so stressful on people and on the planet … a reason to, an excuse to recover our social sanity.

I believe it can be done. I’m sure it will take a long time.