Society is eating itself. Here’s a developmental and phenomenological perspective, with a comparison of society to the psychology of a single person.
I’d place the cause on the increasing overabundance of information, amplified by the Internet and all the false/misleading information, and the decline of the public education system.
The secondary effects would be the resulting anxiety and the desire for an entity to take care of all of the new, spiking, social, economic and international problems. Though the access to information only made these problems (coming from distant sources) seem to have been increasing at a much more rapid rate than previous in history … the idea behind politics being able to take control of what and how people thought grew with a stronger trajectory (climbing faster) … to the level of control it has, now.
Politicians now genuinely fight for control of power … that isn’t supposed to be theirs. People, who still have that “anxiety” that’s increasing, flock to political ideologies like people flocking to local sports teams (who get millions upon millions of dollars for having no real marketable skill to contribute to the betterment of society, yet people throw their money at them, in relatively small amounts of money and sizeable other resources, like time, while complaining about poor education systems, infrastructure, etc. and invest no resources in those directions). This just has been increasing the control of the politicians … who, by virtue of “politics” meaning something very much like “control of the populous,” seek this as their livelihoods now depend on it. And they don’t stop seeking … and the laws that they have passed have given them more control, taking control from fearful and anxious individuals who can no longer fight the politicians. The steady growth of “lobbying” by corporations (business and political) ensures that the people, the original constituents, are powerless. Annnd … you guessed it. Even more anxiety.
People side with political ideologies with such enthusiasm and attachment that it has become toxic and hazardous to the continuity / integrity of society and how the individual person is supposed to and can function in this system. We are fighting each other. Civility is decreasing. People become less rational, more emotional, and less critical.
This is a classic example of the functioning of the model for how a person enters into and rises within the escalation phase and rapidly spiraling toward and into a mental/behavioral crisis. But applied to society, as a whole. Except rather than attacking an “other entity,” our society would implode … blaming and physically attacking and harming, even killing each other. A societal suicide, in a manner of speaking. Some of the people would certainly survive, but not without far too many casualties. But to prevent this, lawmakers would enact even stricter laws, curfews and possibly police states.
It doesn’t have to get that far, though. The people’s use of electronically instant and social media is still in its childhood. People need to learn. People need more education or training in critical thinking/reading/communicating … not necessarily formal schooling, though this is preferred, certainly.
