West under attack
Possible scenario:
The atrocities shown on social media and the news are horrific and unacceptable. Influencers and everyday users now amplify these stories, sharing opinions to large, content-hungry audiences without credibility checks or platform support for structured debate. With access to tools once reserved for professional studios, they fuel the chaos yet feel compelled to act since the Western world is under attack.
There is a well known tai chi principle known as "pushing hands" (推手, tuī shǒu) of applying pressure on all fronts to expose cracks and spot weaknesses that has been applied to the western world on the fronts of its institutions, culture, and economy. The principle is using minimal force over time from all angles simultaneously, redirecting energy, and applying pressure strategically rather than attacking directly to spot weaknesses.
Beliefs and criticisms of a failing society that include anti-establishment, late capitalist and radical political groups have been hijacked away from arguments made to improve the society in which they live to arguments made to tear them down. The original intent of constructive criticism from the left is redirected toward destructive outcomes.
These criticisms were the first signs of cracks showing in the western world and adversaries applied maximum pressure on influencing these ideas. This is relevant to the Fourth Turning general crisis theory as the time periods align with the frameworks predictive models of the cycles of humanity's chaotic activity throughout time. Historians and professors warned this would happen as the capitalist system continued to produce inequalities for certain groups and individuals in society. People became increasingly critical and felt less welcomed in a society and culture that promised them equality and financial prosperity.
The left was the first movement that critiqued these inequalities, calling for change and increasing inclusion in society financially and culturally. Despite progress towards helping the left, the capitalist system could not be upended easily, as companies and entire economies relied on it to support stability in the western world. As a result, the left became increasingly frustrated with the slow rate of change since it didn’t keep up with the rate of change of inequalities they experienced everyday (it outpaced progress to fix it) so this was seen as a perfect crack for adversities to apply maximum pressure on
They virtually hijacked the left by exposing this rate of change discrepancy, instilling hopelessness and reason to believe that they don’t care since they weren’t doing enough. They targeted groups most affected by inequalities that felt most alienated by the system that promised them prosperity. They shifted the lefts advocacy for change into the narrative where it cant be changed and must be torn down. Even though the right was helping, notably at a considerably slow pace, the targeted influences on social media to assimilate the alienated groups on the left was absorbed by a cause that didn’t want to help at all, but to change the value system that determines how the western world exists and functions entirely.
Adversaries to the western world are against its values. The western worlds values are built on judeo Christian belief system which is historically ancient. The opposition to the judeo Christian value system is the Islamic value system. These value systems explain a key aspect of the world’s alliances and partnerships between countries and nations as well as their adversaries. These two specific ancient value systems have been adversaries for thousands of years. This is the overarching conflict that has influenced essentially all of the world’s geopolitical conflicts.
Judeo-Christian values, rooted in ancient traditions, emphasize individual rights, rule of law, and moral frameworks like the Ten Commandments, shaping much of Western governance and ethics. Islamic values, similarly ancient, draw from the Quran and Hadith, prioritizing community, submission to God, and social justice, influencing governance in many Muslim-majority countries. These systems have coexisted, clashed, and cooperated over centuries, with historical examples like the Crusades, Ottoman expansion, or modern alliances showing both conflict and collaboration.
Today the battlefield is not fought with bombs and bullets but with information, ideology and influence. The atrocities we see committed around the world from both western allies and foreign adversaries are part of a larger battle for subtle, covert world domination not by force and might but by ideology and perception. When ideology and perception come under threat, tensions will rise just as much if not more as when borders and territories come under threat.
The case for the capitalist system not serving the whole of the people has never been stronger. The foundations of this system are ingrained within the western value system meaning the western value system is coming under threat by a large portion of its own population. People who ascribe or reside in the western world that experience inequalities or alienation with their culture, identity, finances, or community find it increasingly difficult to support a system that is moving at a rate that increases the discrepancies faster than it can aid the ones that are struggling in it. As a result, they feel left out of this system and the one that is actively working its tail off to accept them is adversarial in its nature.
The system is leaving them behind, not accepting or including these groups. They feel left out of the western world and ascribe to the left who was once for change has been hijacked by adversaries to advocate for a new system that does already accept them.
The Sapir Worf hypothesis states that language shapes perception. The information you access and view shapes your perception of reality. People are on social media and get their news from devices. Comments and shares increase opinions and shape narrative around viral topics. With ai and improving tech, it’s easier to influence these features to craft narratives such as by creating bots to artificially engage with posts with specific dialogue and make them go viral to influence real people’s beliefs of reality. It’s crafting fake narratives to trick people into thinking the world is chaotic to one person or calm to another person depending on their feed and the content they interact with.
By targeting certain groups with specific messaging it can shape their realities and opinions of current systems. It can shape their understand of what’s accepted or isn’t. What is expected or not. Norms and values. Shifting sentiments. It’s a powerful tool akin to brainwashing that most people won’t even realise or even would deny is occurring to them. But let me tell you no one is safe. Not even me and this article here now is shaping your understand of the world. There’s a great movie about this concept that takes it to a hypothetical but convincing scenarios in arrival where Amy Adams learns an alien language and is able to perceive the past, present and future at the same time because it changes how she thinks and processes information.