One striking aspect attributed to the fall of the Roman republic is the immense shearing forces put into effect when a hypercompetitive society turned in on itself. What was once the engine of growth and accumulation - that driving need to excel and top the achievements of one's ancestors and also peers - could not simply be turned off when those same drives turned inward to solve the republic's deeper structural problems, which then started to tear the republic apart.
How this worked was that a given solution to the republic's troubles had to necessarily come from an individual as it worked its way through the political system, and that individual had to assemble supporters into an interested faction, and to everyone competing in that system, a given radical solution not only carried the threat of change, but then the individual carrying out the solution itself would be given all of the accolades and attention, provoking that old fear of the rising tyrant.
And with each turn of the centrifuge, with each wave of crises, an increasingly fragmented body politic had to redouble its efforts to reconfigure the center, and those ambitious individuals cast out through the growing wreckage would double back with twice the ferocity to take back control, ratcheting up the mutual fears of tyranny and retribution, intensifying existing problems and fragmentation.
One can see a similar dynamic - albeit with different characteristics - at play in our own societies today. The welding of large scale perceptions and solutions (ideologies) to identity makes for explosive confrontations that arise from conflicting accounts.
One of the images of effective power we agree on today is that of the brilliant individual fusing right knowledge with right action to properly navigate the knowable world and amass support and wealth while doing so. Consider the constant flame wars across the Internet today, the jostling influencers, and the coalescing political and economic powers around various individuals coming out atop consensus in their given spheres of influence, often through well-connected organizations, foundations, universities, think tanks, and etc.
To look on the micro side of things, political and economic ideology especially is hardening around the will: god forbid one's opinions and ideas are questioned. The specialized individual is stripped of the many-sided powers of conducting daily life, thrust into some niche in the marketplace to produce one interdependent component for the rest of society in return for the other interdependent components from others, and it is the products of the mind that differentiate the power and dignity of the individual. Daily disagreements and conflicts are elevated to existential moral questions and mutual hatred between different interests, which grows in intensity.
On the macro side, a given course of action or solution for society is manifested through a large economic entity like a corporation and its controlling billionaire, the most direct route to the seat of power in the industrial world. And so global governance, energy transition, and public provision is iterated in solutions proposed by the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos, who must concentrate ever more power to keep theirs, corrupting and destroying collective solutions as they are put forth.
If violence really is ultimately the manifestation of disrespect, then it isn't wild speculation to suggest that violence is coming. One need only look to the increasing clamoring for dictator to see the direction that dynamic might go.
