this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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There is a book that gave a scientific explanation and it was written fifty years ago.
"Future Shock" by Alvin Toffler. Toffler was a sociologist. He studied what happened in the past when there were radical changes in society. The first great wave was the switch from hunter/gatherer tribes to farming towns. 5,000 years later there was a leap from farming to industry. Both times there were people who couldn't or wouldn't adapt themselves to the new order.
'Future shock' was his name for the madness of people who would do anything to hold on to a past that was already dead.
Toffler was spot on with his theory, and his follow-up "The Third Wave" is equally relevent to what we're seeing with digital acceleration causing massive societal upheval.
His book "War And Anti-War" came out around 1996.
He predicted that the next American war would be against a non-state, maybe the cartels or a terrorist group.