Over the past five years I've come to the conclusion that the world, people, and ideology he describes are an inevitable outcome of civilization. The 20th century was a nice blip that let some of us imagine otherwise. Civilization is of, by, and for the benefit of empires, and not the people that live in it. The emotional world civilization exists in fosters sociopathy and hatred - the exact conditions needed for empires to operate.

Other outcomes are possible, but not while energy and food production require anything beyond neighborhood levels of organization to produce - not to mention the amount of time it would take to deprogram 10,000 years of internalized belief systems regarding social hierarchy.

you are the media you consume.