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Moral circles contract under scarcity and threat
Argues that the scope of human moral concern expands with security and abundance and contracts to family and local community under threat, tracing the shift from 1990s globalization through the 2008 crisis, 2016 populism, and the 2020 pandemic.
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.
The churn (economic collapse, resource scarcity, war, pandemic) strips away 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.
Civilization—broad cooperation, universal human rights, international law—is more fragile than we assume. It depends on people feeling secure enough to care about distant others.