Thread by @PaulHRosenberg

Globalization is a process that's repeatedly happened in waves, which often break in pandemics like Covid-19. To find our way forward we need to understand the forces involved, not just the virus. At @Salon 1/18
salon.com/2020/05/07/doe…

While Covid-19's mortality rate is lower than previous pandemics, neoliberal globalization is *deliberately* more fragile & future pandemics loom. *Resilience* should be a guiding principle in response. 2/18

But visionaries like #ArundhatiRoy need to understand the history-shaping forces they're up against described by @Peter_Turchin's explanation of the dynamic. 3/18
ft.com/content/10d8f5…

The growth of human cooperation has been staggering--but it's been driven by strife, @Peter_Turchin explains in "Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth." Overcoming divisive forces will be very difficult. 4/18
amazon.com/Ultrasociety-Y…

The driving force behind waves of globalization is secular cycles of integration & disintegration in individual societies, which become synchronized, often by pandemics. 5/18

This also shapes our greatest challenges:
1. the hold of market ideology on elite imaginations & 2. the polarization of our politics
and illuminates the need to develop bottom-up democratic responses. 6/18

Secular cycles of integration & disintegration have been explained by structural demographic theory (SDT), developed by @jgoldsto and refined by @Peter_Turchin, which I've written about before. 7/18
bookshop.org/a/2464/9781138…
bookshop.org/a/2464/9780691…

Structural demographic theory (SDT) is an empirical, mathematically modeled theory that can be narratively (over)simplified as follows: 8/18

Synchronizing mechanisms to align individual cycles don't have to be the same as driving mechanisms, but in this case they are intimately related: 9/18

Our modern world isn't that different. What is distinctive is how it's legitimized--the neoliberal ideology equating freedom & the market. 10/18

"Market freedom" is a strange form of freedom, but one that meets elite legitimation needs, as mass immisseration grows: 11/18

And the pandemic vividly reveals how narrow such a model of "freedom" is, as opposed to the freedom to create a more life-preserving alternative future: 12/18

SDT also helps explain our political polarization, as @Peter_Turchin explains in *Ages of Discord*. He builds on the work in "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches" amazon.com/Polarized-Amer… but provides a slightly different explanation: 13/18

Thus, elite-driven polarization isn't likely to abate, but mass consensus-building is still possible & provides a possible way out via citizens assemblies, as explained by OECD expert @ClaudiaChwalisz, when I interviewed her: 14/18
salon.com/2019/12/15/fro…

There's strong reason to believe a substantial bipartisan majority would support a dramatic shift in long-term priorities based on social solidarity and protection of life, according to @dataforprogress: 15/18
dataforprogress.org/memos/put-peop…

Of course, *creating* citizens assemblies is the challenging part. But the initiative process provides a way, as shown by the powerful (but forgotten) example of the 1982 Nuclear Freeze referendum: 16/18

So, there is a possible way forward that *most* Americans support. And there are ways to get there, as well--strengthening our democracy to secure our future: 17/18

Read the whole story at @Salon here: 18/18
salon.com/2020/05/07/doe…