> and cannot cope with things going back to normal.
I would argue that we worked our way to the post cold-war golden age, and then destroyed it with greed, which led to financial pain, which led to political nonsense, which led to the rubbish we are in right now.
So the period we are in right now is not the "back to normal" phase, but an actual decrease of human evolution. Not dissimilar to things that happened in the past, for example with the collapse of the roman empire.
Greed is part of what humans are. It's part of what destroys societies. Building a society that can survive human nature long term is an unsolved problem.
You sound like you expected that, after the end of the Cold War, we had a perfect society, and then we fell from a state of grace and ruined it. No, after the end of the Cold War, the pressure was removed that had been keeping us from acting on our worst impulses. Turns out that many of us were worse than we expected.
I would argue that we worked our way to the post cold-war golden age, and then destroyed it with greed, which led to financial pain, which led to political nonsense, which led to the rubbish we are in right now.
So the period we are in right now is not the "back to normal" phase, but an actual decrease of human evolution. Not dissimilar to things that happened in the past, for example with the collapse of the roman empire.