European Union

Europe has experienced a profound crisis of identity since the World Wars. All the pillars of the West that were used to justify its own superiority, for better or worse, including Christianity, white supremacy, Western civilization, and capitalism, have been torn down to a certain degree. Europe`s highly individualistic nature has resulted in a plethora of pseudo-religions filling the void created by the decline of Christianity. Some of them take up the ritual and communal aspects, like fan communities, romantic or wellness culture. Others take a philosophical route, like communism, social justice, or Nazism, and others like neoliberalism have tried to make as much money as possible to fill the moral void.

Going forward, we`re going to split Western civilization between America and Europe, which are ideologically very different spots. In Europe, the World Wars were deeply crippling. Nazism was so evil and horrifying that much of Europe afterwards basically decided to go for the exact opposite. While the Nazis were nationalistic, hyper-masculine, racist, and militaristic, modern Europe is transnational, generally dislikes aggression, is multicultural, and pacifist. However, when you push anything to an extreme, absurdity ensues. You need to have more than one dot in your moral framework. By trying too hard to not be Nazis at the expense of alienating nearly half viewers, I`m going to say Europe has become pathetic. It has gone from 38 to 24 percent of the world`s economy since 1965 while the U.S. has remained a stable quarter. It continually sheds its inventor and creative class to America since its bureaucratic state constricts anyone who wants to do anything. The European Union is incapable of dealing with crises; big brother America stepped in and bailed out Europe in the 2008 financial crash, Yugoslavia, Libya, and guess who`s currently managing Europe`s foreign policy against Russian aggression? America.

Western Europe free rides off American defense, will imbibe American culture while enviously hating America. Europe`s recent main ideology has been that of comfort: comfort for their own populations with nice welfare systems, comfort from the dangers of international politics the Americans can handle, and comfort trying to ask difficult questions about what Europe means anymore. Similarly, Europe`s collapsing birth rates put it into similar issues as the Confucian East Asian nations. Europe has dealt with declining birth rates by importing immigrants but hasn`t really done a very good job of integrating said immigrants. In America or Canada, for example, practically everyone`s of immigrant ancestry, and societies are great at assimilating immigrants. This isn`t the case in Europe, where, for example, Muslims are often radicalized since they don`t feel at home in the European societies.

As Europe ages, it`ll also get poorer. America is also getting less and less willing to support Europe as it has more issues at home. Europe will have a profound crisis of identity in the years to come. Europe will often make very difficult choices out of what it stands for. There`s so much random chaos here. Christianity, which was the main glue holding Europe together, has little sway. Most Europeans today follow a secularized version of Christian values while generally being atheist. The European religious are actually less religious on average in terms of praying, believing in God, going to church, etc., than the American non-religious, for reasons I`ll explain in the next segment.

Europe may either break up under pressure or develop a totally new ideology. I hope Europeans do not turn to extreme nationalism and racism, which seems to be the logical extension of their right-wing. While the American right-wing is generally Christian, even under the libertarian wing, when I talk to European right-wingers, I struggle to see what they believe in besides a knee-jerk defense of Western civilization that ultimately boils down to “I don`t want more brown people.” Left-wing ideology lacks a coherent motivational ideology to move forward and does not have expansive views of the world, but rather seeks to simply get rid of people they do not like. Europe is not a highly cohesive collectivist society like China or Korea that will force itself to pull together under pressure. Instead, Europe is individualistic and atomized, and if it loses its way, it will perish. Russia is in a similar position to the rest of Europe, with declining birth rates and a lack of any real expansive ideology. However, I also believe that Russia has the potential to either break under pressure or be able to reform. Throughout its history, Russia has pulled several “Hail Marys,” whether with Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, or Peter the Great. The Russians still possess a certain grit, and stoicism is not missing from the rest of Europe. However, it was also beaten down in the 20th century more than the rest of Europe. I estimate that the chances of Russia getting its act together are around a quarter.

Uniated States of America

America completely ideologically diverged from Europe in the era after the World Wars. The World Wars, which weren`t very devastating for America, allowed the U.S. to remain aggressive, religious, and capitalist, while Europe did not. One of the major differences between the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. is far more religious than Europe. This is largely because, in Europe, the religions were all state-based, and for centuries, people just went to the churches that their rulers told them to. Due to a combination of the World Wars and a conscious decision by the European churches to commit suicide, religiosity collapsed after the wars. In contrast, America established itself as a secular nation, which means that it doesn`t have an official church. However, America`s religion, like everything else in its society, is based on capitalist principles. American Protestantism is extremely dynamic, with countless different sects, since people continually change churches to find the one that suits them best. Your average American changes their sect of Christianity at least once in their lives. Uninspiring churches die out and are replaced by interesting ones. One thing many people don`t know is that American Protestantism is global. About a quarter of Latin America are Protestants converted to originally American sects. Majorities of many African countries, such as Zimbabwe and South Africa, worship sects of Protestantism brought to them by American preachers. A lot of this comes in the form of Pentecostalism or charismatic Christianity, which originated in 1920s Los Angeles. In this form of worship, people speak in tongues and gibberish as they connect with God, allowing for a merging with local mystic traditions. There are nearly 300 million Pentecostalists around the world, and 500 billion people who worship similar sects of American Protestants. American Protestants are making such massive gains in the third world that, if trajectories continue, Protestantism will be a majority of all Christianity by 2050.

One of the interesting things in America is that even though organized religion has declined, religiosity has declined to a much lesser extent. The growing agnostic community, in a lot of ways, isn`t your average American agnostic. When polled, they believe in God, pray on an occasional basis, and are looking for a deeper spiritual connection. It`s just that the current churches and religions aren`t providing a framework that`s appealing or meaningful to them. You`ve seen cycles of traditional versus intuitive religion in American history. For example, church attendance was far higher in the 1950s than any other era in American history. Even the American Revolution, in which only 15 to 40 percent of Americans attended church on a regular basis. We`re currently in an era of intuitive religion in which people mix their own combinations of politics, whatever religions they want, with new age beliefs to form individualized personal belief structures.

Meanwhile, you see lots of surrogates for religion appearing in modern America. Fan and wellness culture, for example, often fulfill the ritual and community parts. Similarly, political movements often fill the ideological void. Interestingly enough, the 40th decades have continually seen religious revivals in America. The 70s and 40s were the first Great Awakening, the 1840s with the Second Great Awakening, and the 1940s were the post-World War II religious boom. I don`t know why this happens, it could be generational, but let`s just say I wouldn`t be surprised if a religious revival takes place in the 2040s in America. I don`t know what the next evolution of American religion will be. I feel like a profound shift will have to take place to adapt to the digital age and people`s changing understandings of the world. I wonder if some sects of Protestantism will take on new age aspects and become more deist or mystic. Similarly, preaching will probably start to take place online as well.

This is already starting to happen. One of my friends actually founded the first purely digital mainline Protestant church in America. The only thing I know is that American society is remarkably creative, and there`s a massive void for spiritual belief and community in modern American society. The big question is just how much the next religious wave deviates from the current religious norms. The right and left-wing divide in America, when it boils down to it, is really a religious conflict. Both the right and left believe in liberalism, but liberalism`s barely an ideology at this point and largely relies upon other ideologies to support it. Since wanting freedom and democracy doesn`t cover any of the moral frameworks like community and ethics that religion would, the right pulls from Christianity and the left from belief in equality and lack of harm that stems from a combination of Marxism and Christianity. You can actually see this as a manifestation of an ideological struggle inherent to all of Western civilization between traditional Christianity and Augustinian interpretations.

Traditional Christianity holds that humanity is inherently sinful and that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ. The left, in secular terms, believes in the idea of a just and equal society where all individuals are valued and have equal opportunities. Marx turned this into a class struggle between the oppressor class (typically seen as the wealthy and powerful) and the oppressed class (typically seen as the working class). This has evolved to include issues of race, gender, and other forms of identity. The right, on the other hand, tends to pull from a more conservative interpretation of Christianity, emphasizing traditional values and individual responsibility. Augustinian interpretations of Christianity emphasize the struggle between good and evil and the need for divine grace to overcome sin. This underlying struggle is indeed inherent to Western civilization, and the left-right divide in America can be seen as a manifestation of this ideological struggle.

Meanwhile, the right believes in the Augustinian approach that comes indirectly from Persian religions like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism - that the world is a struggle between the forces of good led by God, and evil led by Satan, and the forces of good must wage war against the forces of evil that want to tear down civilization, represented on the right by Muslims, atheists, communists, etc. This underlying struggle is inherent to Western civilization, but I generally think that in this realm, the furthest left will end up self-destructing. This is because in its drive for purity, the social justice wing, without having any countervailing forces, will end up taking more and more radical positions until it alienates everyone else. Social justice`s literal lack of belief and truth and compromise means that it easily unmoors itself from reality or any ability to judge situations accurately and think strategically.

Similarly, the social justice coalition is fairly weak and how disparate its coalition is. Married couples, for example, tend to vote similarly, which negates them when they try to split women off as a demographic to push against the patriarchy. Similarly, probable majorities of ethnic minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, would prefer to assimilate and get status in traditional American society rather than tear down the patriarchy, white supremacy, etc. As immigrant groups assimilate more, they tend to identify more with American society, which is a big reason why Donald Trump was the Republican who won the highest percentage of ethnic minority votes since practically the 19th century.

For social justice to hold together a coalition of Asians, Hispanic, and Black people who, in many circumstances, have more uncommon to white people than each other, it can get quite unwieldy. One of the things that have to do with the modern left strategy is alienating young men through the emphasis on toxic masculinity and the inherent patriarchy in practically every society in history. For contestable reasons, men are a majority of the leadership in most social positions, and so by alienating young men, they`re effectively killing their own cause 20 years down the road by breeding a leadership class that hates them.

I`m generally seeing two different ideological trajectories emerge among young men today. The first is a sort of centrism with Jordan Peterson as its prophet. Depressingly for lots of young men, Jordan Peterson is the only force in their lives that tells them that their lives have meaning. Stoicism is also a secondary force in this field. For these reasons, it wouldn`t surprise me if 30 years down the road, Jordan Peterson`s philosophy becomes very important to society. The centrist area is also generally pretty liberal in a traditional sense, but is also masculine and really doesn`t appeal to women much.

The other main force is the so-called alt-right, which isn`t really a single movement but a lot of weird ideological pieces thrown into a veritable fruit salad with a broad spectrum extending to Jordan Peterson`s centrists, with very few people at the actual extreme, but a lot somewhere in the path to it. Sadly, I`ve seen an incredible amount of radicalization in the last couple of years, largely causing being pissed off at the left, as people move further right, and so this could change.

One of the general truths I`ve found out about the alt-right is that it`s on average far more sexist than racist, although it often is both. A big question for America is after social justice implodes, will the far-right or the center gain power afterwards? Something that worries me about both of these groups is that they`re both very heavily male, and even among the centrists, you do find a certain degree of misogyny beneath the surface.

Also, adding together the fact that the people who make these ideologies are often nerds who didn`t have a lot of romantic experiences in their youth, I worry about a heavily misogynistic or at least bro-centric philosophy developing. It also seems probable that America will experience a nationalist backlash. Across American history, once the foreign-born population reaches 20 percent, the U.S. cuts off immigration for the next 60 years to assimilate the newcomers. This occurred in both 1790 and 1920 and occurred again in 2016, and after each of these periods, America experienced a period of strong American nationalism where unified American identity is exalted. This will likely happen again as America goes through a period of extreme nationalism. Also, throughout American history, we`ve seen the idea of “White American” expand from basically White Britons and Dutch to now including Jews, Lebanese, Italians, etc. It seems likely that many Hispanics, who are on average two-thirds European ancestry and marry into the White population at high levels, alongside Asians who also marry White people at high rates, will start to be classified as White.