Whether we realize it or not, we all have a tendency to assume that “nothing ever happens.” That’s the zoomer way of referring to a well-known phenomenon called “normalcy bias.” Essentially, most people generally believe that life, as we know it, will continue, in more or less the same way, for the rest of our lives. We’ll learn about major, civilization-defining events in world history — like World War I, or the Revolutionary War — and we’ll assume that, well, history is history. Those kinds of events simply don’t happen anymore. “Nothing ever happens,” as the saying goes. The idea of a new civil war, or a new world war, seems too distant and implausible to consider very seriously. We’re simply too advanced for that kind of thing.
But the funny thing about World War I and the Revolutionary War — and most other conflicts throughout history — is that, at one point, they also seemed unthinkable. In fact, in 1909, someone named Norman Angell wrote a book called “The Great Illusion.” The premise of the book — which became an international best-seller, and gained a massive following on college campuses — was that war was a thing of the past. Countries that were economically connected, he argued, would never fight major conflicts with one another, because they had too much to lose. At the time, everyone thought that the book made a really compelling point. No one took issue with it. War had been solved! And then, five years later, World War I began. Tens of millions of people died.
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