Thomas Hobbes was onto something when he wrote Leviathan, he was just a few centuries early. Everywhere in the world has converged towards the same belief system, regardless of religion or politics. What humanity worships now is the unholy trinity of money, the individual, and the nation-state. It would be difficult to even imagine a different system, as Mark Fisher opines in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Even if one is not religious, most have a belief system that constitutes a secular religion, for better or worse.
The obsession with acquiring government-issued fiat which is actually just debt, of which there is an infinite, possibly inter-generational supply of, has been one of the most harmful fixtures of the modern psychological hellscape. It's distinctly interconnected with the elevation of the individual, a few billionaires being worth more than most of humanity, and of nation-states which issues the currency and enforce the laws that only serve to consolidate power.
The cult of the self, the cultural narcissism which pervades modernity should make anyone question the DSM-V, which defines mental disorder as anything which interferes with functioning in modern society. To survive and thrive in modernity requires a false elevation of the self. The default person, or normie, can not understand that they are part of a system which enslaves them through fear, lies and manipulation. They believe that the system is set up to be zero-sum, real-life imitating Squid Game: for them to win, others must lose. This internalized hyper-capitalism, which would have been neurotic in any other era of history, is just the normal operating mindset of today.
Modern Slavery
Human lives are far more regimented by Big Clock, and every aspect of life seems to be instrumentalized, socializing is just networking, most waking hours must be spent on being economically productive or training to be productive. Everyone more or less has the same role: economic slave. Regardless of the political system in place, one is an instrumental unit of economic productivity, the only difference being how much one is allowed to benefit from their own productivity.
Most of the western world pays around 30-50% of their income to a government which despises them, and then they will say bullshit like "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civil society". Even Egyptian slaves paid 20% of their income to the Pharaoh. Slave revolts generally did not succeed, nor would the American people succeed in even coordinating against the enemy within. The first and second amendments, which should have functioned to limit the power of the government, have been eroded so much that they may be in name only.
Secret Government
Most nation-states operate under a veil of secrecy: the public officials we know nothing about, while they spy on and surveil private citizens. The emergence and normalization of intelligence agencies is a blight against humanity, responsible for creating low-trust cultures and sabotaging the interests of neighboring countries. The secret government is run by bureaucrats lurking in the shadows, and in high places without oversight. They may not even represent your nation-state, as international institutions accountable to no one hold all the power. They order the disappearances, deplatforming, modern day Zersetzung tactics against anyone who may oppose them.
The secret government uses secret courts, secret information, secret police, against the people who they deem are the enemy. There is nothing one can do, there is no one coming to save you, the reason why you are not resisting is the same reason why your neighbor is not resisting. The story is the same, no matter what country it is, even in the USA which has the highest rate of civilian firearm ownership in the world, all of the guns in the world could not help us without will. The problem is also that there is nothing worth fighting for, especially not financial wars.
They operate windowless buildings in the bugman hive cities to spy on all telecommunications using optical fiber taps. They hoard all the critical security vulnerabilities in mainstream operating systems and abuse hardware backdoors to your devices. The normies are completely unfazed by all of this as long as they can have their bread and circuses. We are actually a regressive society if we all accept corporations, lawyers, and policemen in between all of our communications, and by extension, our minds.
Cult of the Self
Many people who prepare for a social or economic collapse, not so secretly want it to happen. However, even in the most dire situations, such as a dissolution of government, there is continuity of civilization. Even the billionaires with their fancy doomsday bunkers, won't get to utilize them, even though they are responsible for the social inequality leading up to a collapse.
Preppers generally have little to no provisions for others in their survival plans, as if they think that the post-apocalyptic world will be worth living in. I am of course focusing on preppers as a microcosm of the greater society, which has even less regard for others. Most people would simply assume that the government will assist them, even if it is government responsible for a social collapse and the intent is to cull the population. Few of them understand that it is community which is the best preparation. Whether that community is a group of raiders or farmers, few can survive an apocalyptic event alone.
It is natural to be attached to one's own family, but completely artificial to pledge allegiance to a nation-state. It is natural to feel an extended kin connection with one's own ethnic group, but completely artificial to pledge allegiance to political borders. Just like animals, behavioral patterns can be epigenetic, inherited from parents, like a cat instinctively covering up their own feces. While humans exhibit far more neuroplasticity than other species, each person is far less individual than society has us brainwashed to believe.
No Future
The present status quo is why I think humanity has no worthwhile future. The entirety of the species is locked into conflict with each other and most people lead lives which are actually miserable, yet seemingly normal. What is most unique to our time is that within the past two centuries or all of modernity, there was the greatest exponential growth of the human population. It's just as likely for the population to decline, either quickly or slowly.
To avoid the psychological black death as a result of the world in chains scenario, we need a new default religion to overwrite scientism, monotheism, money, the self, and nation-states. I am more convinced that the world in chains scenario will be the steady state of humanity for the foreseeable future.