The word "order" comes from the Latin "ordo," meaning arrangement or sequence. In human societies, an order is simply a governing system for how people deal with each other—whether within countries through constitutions, or between countries through treaties. These orders seem permanent when we live within them, but history reveals a startling truth: they always change, usually after great conflicts, and always follow predictable patterns that most people alive have never witnessed before.

Ray Dalio, studying 500 years of empire cycles, discovered that the most important events that surprised him did so because they had never happened in his lifetime. Yet when he looked back through history, he found they had occurred many times before—the rise and fall of the Dutch, British, and American empires following nearly identical patterns. We are living through such a transformation now, one as significant as the collapse of feudalism or the birth of the industrial age. The times ahead will be radically different from those we've experienced in our lifetimes, though remarkably similar to many periods before.

The Anatomy of Changing Orders (1500 - Present)

Every great empire follows what Dalio calls "the big cycle"—a roughly 250-year pattern of rise, dominance, and decline. The cycle begins after a major conflict establishes a new leading power and world order. Because no one wants to challenge this power, a period of peace and prosperity follows. As people grow accustomed to this stability, they increasingly bet on it continuing, borrowing money and creating financial bubbles. The empire's currency becomes the world's reserve currency, enabling even more borrowing.

But success contains the seeds of decline. As people become richer, they become more expensive and less competitive. Wealth gaps grow between rich and poor, creating internal tensions. The empire overextends itself militarily and financially, borrowing from poorer countries to maintain its dominance. Eventually, the financial bubble bursts, forcing the country to choose between defaulting on debts or printing massive amounts of money. It always chooses to print, devaluing the currency and creating inflation.

This economic crisis coincides with internal conflict between rich and poor, often manifesting as political extremism and populism. As the empire weakens internally, external rivals sense opportunity and mount challenges. The combination of internal breakdown and external pressure leads to wars that ultimately establish a new world order. Then the cycle begins again.

We can trace this pattern precisely through modern history. The Dutch empire peaked in the 1600s with Amsterdam as the world's financial centre and the guilder as the reserve currency. Overextension in costly wars with Britain and massive debts led to the collapse of the Bank of Amsterdam and the guilder's devaluation into irrelevance. The British empire then rose, with London as the financial centre and the pound as the reserve currency, only to face the same fate after the massive debts of two world wars forced repeated devaluations and the dollar's emergence as the new global standard.

The American Cycle (1944 - 2020s)

The current world order, commonly called the American world order, formed after the Allied victory in World War II when the United States emerged as the dominant global power. The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement established the dollar as the world's leading reserve currency, backed by gold at $35 per ounce. This system gave America enormous advantages—people worldwide eagerly saved in dollars, effectively lending money back to the empire, and when the US ran out of money, it could simply print more.

The first crack appeared in 1971 when President Nixon ended the dollar's convertibility to gold. As Ray Dalio witnessed as a young clerk on the New York Stock Exchange floor, this was effectively a default—the US had spent more money than it had gold to back it, just as had happened in 1933 under Roosevelt. Both times, breaking the link to gold allowed continued spending through money printing, causing asset prices to rise and the currency's value to fall.

Since 1971, the US has followed the classic pattern of imperial decline. It has run persistent trade deficits, borrowing from poorer countries like China that save more. Military spending has soared—over $8 trillion on foreign wars since September 11th alone, plus trillions more maintaining bases in 70 countries. Wealth inequality has reached levels not seen since the 1920s, with the richest 1% owning more than the bottom 50% combined. Political polarisation has intensified, with populist movements on both left and right gaining strength.

Meanwhile, China has followed the classic rising power playbook. It has prioritised education, innovation, and manufacturing competitiveness. Its share of global trade has grown dramatically, and its currency is increasingly used in international transactions. Most tellingly, the relationship between the established power (US) and rising power (China) shows all the signs of the external conflicts that historically accompany changing world orders.

The Three Converging Forces (2020s)

Three unprecedented developments in recent years signal that we are approaching the climax of the current cycle. First, countries cannot pay their debts even after lowering interest rates to zero, forcing central banks to print massive amounts of money. The response to the 2008 financial crisis and 2020 pandemic involved money printing on a scale that would have been unthinkable in previous eras, yet it has become routine.

Second, internal conflicts have emerged due to growing gaps in wealth and values. This manifests as political populism and polarisation between the left, which wants to redistribute wealth, and the right, which wants to defend existing wealth concentrations. The January 6th Capitol riots, Brexit, the rise of nationalist parties across Europe, and increasing political violence all reflect this internal breakdown.

Third, external conflict is escalating between the rising great power (China) and the leading great power (United States). Trade wars, technology competition, military tensions in the South China Sea, and disputes over Taiwan mirror the challenges that historically precede major conflicts between established and rising empires.

These three forces last converged from 1930 to 1945, leading to the Great Depression, internal political upheavals across the developed world, World War II, and ultimately the establishment of the current American-led order. The pattern suggests we are in a similar transition period now.

The Anthropology of Transition (2020s - 2040s)

For ordinary people living through such transitions, the experience feels like crisis and chaos. In the 1930s, families faced unemployment, political extremism, and eventually war. Yet anthropologists studying that period now see it as the birth of the modern middle-class society—the New Deal, GI Bill, suburban development, and postwar prosperity that defined the next 80 years of American life.

The 2020s carry the same disorienting quality. Housing costs have made traditional middle-class life unaffordable for many. In London, £35,000 barely covers rent despite being well above the official poverty line. Young adults delay marriage and children due to economic uncertainty. Traditional career paths feel obsolete as artificial intelligence reshapes entire industries overnight. Political institutions seem unable to address basic challenges like infrastructure, healthcare costs, or climate change.

Yet beneath this apparent breakdown, the foundations of a new order are being laid. Artificial intelligence is becoming as fundamental as electricity was in the early 1900s. Clean energy costs have plummeted to the point where solar and wind are the cheapest forms of power in most regions. Biotechnology is beginning to give humans unprecedented control over biological processes. Digital technologies are creating new forms of money, governance, and social organisation that transcend national boundaries.

The Emerging Order (2030s - 2050s)

Just as the industrial age created new forms of work, family, and community life, the emerging order will reshape the fundamental patterns of human existence. Work will shift from stable, location-based jobs to fluid, globally connected tasks. A designer in Lagos might collaborate with an AI system to create products for clients in Seoul, while a teacher in Manchester provides personalised instruction to students across three continents.

The nuclear family structure that dominated the industrial era will give way to more varied arrangements. Co-living spaces will combine private pods with shared kitchens, childcare, and workspaces, coordinated by digital systems that allocate resources and responsibilities. Extended families may reunite under one roof, while chosen families of friends and collaborators form new kinds of households.

Food production will decouple from geography and seasons. Lab-grown meat and precision fermentation will make protein abundant and cheap. Gene-edited crops will resist drought and pests. Vertical farms in cities will produce fresh vegetables year-round. Meals will be increasingly personalised—bread designed for gut health, snacks optimised for cognitive performance, diets tailored to individual genetic profiles.

Money itself will be reimagined. Central bank digital currencies will make cash obsolete, giving governments unprecedented visibility into all transactions. Cryptocurrencies will enable new forms of global commerce and organisation that bypass traditional nation-states. Programmable money will automatically execute contracts, distribute resources, and coordinate economic activity in ways that would have seemed magical to previous generations.

Political authority will fragment and reconstitute. Nation-states will remain important but will share power with global institutions managing climate, AI governance, and space exploration, as well as local communities managing shared resources and digital networks organising people around common interests rather than geographic proximity.

The New Great Powers (2040s - 2070s)

By mid-century, the global balance of power will have shifted dramatically. China may have emerged as the dominant economic power, with its currency serving as a major reserve asset alongside or instead of the dollar. But the pattern may be more complex than simple American decline and Chinese rise. India's massive population and growing technological capabilities position it as a third major power. Africa's demographic boom could make Nigeria one of the world's most populous and influential countries.

More fundamentally, the nature of power itself may be changing. In the agricultural age, power came from controlling land. In the industrial age, it came from controlling factories and resources. In the emerging age, power may come from controlling data, algorithms, and networks. This could enable new forms of organisation that transcend traditional geographic boundaries—digital empires that exist in cyberspace but shape physical reality.

The transition will not be smooth. History suggests that changing world orders involve significant conflicts, whether economic, political, or military. The current tensions between the US and China could escalate into a new cold war or even hot conflict. Internal divisions within countries could lead to political breakdown or civil unrest. Climate change could create mass migrations and resource conflicts that destabilise entire regions.

Yet these conflicts, however painful for those living through them, serve a historical function. They clear away obsolete institutions and power structures, making space for new arrangements better suited to emerging realities. The wars and revolutions of the 1930s and 1940s, devastating as they were, ultimately created the prosperity and stability of the postwar era.

Living Through the Transition

For individuals navigating this transformation, Ray Dalio offers simple but profound advice: earn more than you spend, and treat each other well. All the complex forces of technological change, geopolitical competition, and social transformation ultimately come down to these basics. Societies that can maintain productivity and social cohesion will thrive. Those that cannot will decline.

On a personal level, this means developing skills that complement rather than compete with artificial intelligence. It means building diverse income streams rather than depending on a single employer. It means cultivating relationships and communities that provide support during uncertain times. It means staying physically and mentally healthy to navigate rapid change. Most importantly, it means maintaining perspective—recognising that we are living through a historic transition that will ultimately create new possibilities for human flourishing.

The anthropological perspective reminds us that every generation faces challenges that seem unprecedented and overwhelming. Medieval peasants could not imagine life without feudalism. Industrial workers could not envision the suburban middle class. People in the 1930s could not foresee the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. Similarly, we cannot fully imagine what daily life will look like in the 2040s and beyond.

What we can know is that human societies have repeatedly demonstrated remarkable adaptability. We have survived ice ages, plagues, wars, and economic collapses. We have invented agriculture, cities, writing, science, and democracy. We have extended lifespans, reduced poverty, and connected the world through trade and communication. The current transition, however disruptive, is part of this ongoing human story of innovation and adaptation.

The 2020s will be remembered not as the decade when everything fell apart, but as the decade when everything began to come together in new ways. We are witnessing the end of one world order and the birth of another—a process as natural and inevitable as the changing of seasons, but occurring on a timescale that encompasses multiple human generations. Understanding this pattern does not make the transition easier, but it does make it more comprehensible. We are not facing random chaos but following a script that has been performed many times before, with new actors, new technologies, and new possibilities, but with the same underlying human drives for prosperity, security, and meaning that have shaped every previous transformation in human history.