Each of us should be creating for your own use, discovery, and growth, what seems to you a plausible narrative on how we got here. That draft should be modified almost daily as you come across new as yet unassimilated thinking, facts, and trends. This effort will help you understand what is happening*
Mine now goes: empires broke up into feudal estates which began to produce a surplus and this surplus was used to create craft and trade, which generated more capital. That capital was owned by the feudal estate oligarchies and invested in more sophisticated material objects and trade. Technology (steam, iron, coal) added to and amplified the mix and was used to strip wealth out of the land and from the peasants.
The emerging legal system worked for the benefits of the “owners” The emergence of the nation-state, with its rigid boundaries (instead of people in communities (the Bible uses “nation” for the original “peoples’).
That legal system had proven incapable of working for the benefits of society and was ruined through extraction from the land and its people. The rising wealth of the elite and the lack of increase for the rest is clearly the result of legal and contract cultures.
That culture is under pressure from the scale of its failures. But it will try to adapt. Rheotic will change from Climate is a hox or can be dealt with by new tech because we must protect the standard of living of the workers, The underlying unspoken driver is to keep the oil flowing, keep institutions as they are, and hence the income and wealth of the oligarchs continues as is, including necessary growth to pay the debt.
*Spinoza in his ethics says more or less that the world affects the body, the body the mind, and the mind creates an understanding of what is happening. If the understanding is accurate you will feel positive emotions, of clarity, success, awe respect, and love. But if your idea is wrong and doesn’t fit will generate negative emotions, fear, anger, anxiety, hatred, and disdain. So, if you are feeling negative it is because your understanding (say of Trump) is incomplete or wrong. So you can examine your feelings and if negative time to rethink.
This is great. Yes, we always have a worldview, and what’s nice here is the thought that if you’re cranky (or even if not), a periodic reality check is just what the doctor ordered.