In the Western world–and by that term I mean the countries that are heirs to the promises of the 18th Century Enlightenment project, including most of the countries of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and, of course, Japan and South Korea–anxiety about everything, everywhere always being in a state of dismal decline and ignominious ending is a common theme.

If we’re honest (which usually we’re not, as self-absorbed and blinkered as we are), such anxiety about an “always on the come” Apocalypse–whether personal or corporate, whether from Mother Nature or the Almighty God–is “baked in” to the behavioral pie of people of the West. From the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 to the current battles over whose politics get to rule the Internet, people in the West temperamentally love an argument, love having anxiety about conflict, and love the dynamism of not getting along with each other.

Even all the way to the point of an externally delivered, near Armageddon. Or at least, whatever will do until that Armageddon actually shows up.

And at the last minute, when the psychological barbarians are decamped at the gate, and the physical structures are about to be torn down by the literal barbarians, we people in the West, weirdly enough, come together, make a decision, and then proceed to move like white lightning, rampaging over all of the authoritarian, theocratic, non-Western, and, of course solidly unified “others.”

The strange thing is, we in the West have been engaged in that pattern of intercivilizational behavior for at least the last half a millennium with no foreseeable hitch in our step.

The fact of the matter is, the battle of Armageddon is always there to be joined. The Apocalypse of the righteous and the unrighteous alike is always upon us. The “end of all things” always shows up, like clockwork, in the minds of the anxious, the impatient, and the dissatisfied. What appears from the outside to be a state of endless chaos, fractious disunity, and an exploitable weakness, always–just in the nick of time usually–provides people in the West with the dynamism, unpredictability, and raw courage, at the tip of the spear, to do the thing that needs to be done, when all hope seems to be lost.

And then to return home–physically, psychologically, and even spiritually victorious–only to start bickering amongst ourselves yet again.

I don’t see the next 75 years of people in the West having any different pattern of behavior than they have exhibited in the last 500 years.