Moral circles contract under scarcity and threat

Broad human cooperation is a luxury of abundance and security. Our moral circle is elastic, widening from local to national to global when we feel safe and pulling back to family and neighborhood when we feel threatened.

Crisis—economic collapse, scarcity, war, pandemic—strips abstract loyalties. Citizenship and humanity give way to family and immediate community.

The 1990s brought peak globalization and “global citizen” identity. The 2008 financial crisis reversed it. Populist movements in 2016 and the 2020 pandemic pushed us further back, to nationalism and local concerns.

Broad cooperation, universal human rights, international law: civilization is fragile. It depends on people feeling secure enough to care about distant others.