Just like with most ecosystems before they become disturbed, many societies in the past had reached a stage where they experienced little change, and when this change did come it was usually in the form of either some external influence that had not been previously encountered, or an internal one involving particular unconventional groups. It also seems that the more globalized society becomes, the more frequent great social upheavals are. If we were to compare the Native Americans to Medieval Europe, or Medieval Europe to today, we can clearly see a correlation between the diversity of a single, interacting society (such as all of the Native American tribes, or all of Medieval Europe), and the rate at which that society oscillates between various cultural extremes.

Carl Jung presented us with the concept of the collective unconscious. To skip ahead to the key part I want to address, he believed that within every individual there exists common archetypes (hero/villain, etc) which represent our outlook on life. In my interpretation of his explanation, archetypes are continually presented to us as we experience diverse concepts and ideas, or take in stimuli that adds, contradicts, or somehow interests our mental schema. These archetypes will stay with us unless we resolve them; unresolved archetypes will create anxiety, leading us to perform more extreme and primitive acts. He actually believed that increased polarization of society was a direct manifestation of the unresolved archetypes of the minds of the members of that society. In my mind, he actually created the basis for Rogers' theory of self-actualization with the idea of resolving these archetypes, but more importantly, this gives us an excellent explanation for the dynamic of society I was describing earlier.

Early societies which lived in relative isolation were presented with few archetypes. Similar setting, similar people, a set of ideas which everyone from an early age comes to understand. Given time, these few archetypes become easy to resolve, resulting in a somewhat restful coexistence (this can of course involve frequent fighting in some circumstances, but the balance of power rarely changes). With the mixing of cultures comes more ideas and desires, presenting new archetypes representing new dynamics never experienced before. Perhaps "new archetypes" isn't the best way to describe it. The members of the societal-intermix are experiencing new things to which they can apply archetypes to, challenging beliefs and concepts which the individuals were brought up on. I will not go into the dynamics of resolving archetypes now, but needless to say most individuals become overwhelmed and fail to resolve fully the new patterns their archetypes seem to be forming. This results in chaos and strife, simply through the intermixing of culture and ideas. I am not suggesting isolation as the answer to end unnecessary suffering at the hands of society, but it is a bit late now to share my solution, I'll talk about it a bit more later on. Please discuss in the meantime.

I apologize if it's a bit hard to follow, it was sort of a "stream of consciousness" thing.