Issue (WIWE) status: Submitted, Unpublished

Wild Card's progress: Basic

This Wild Card came from: 
Interviews

The source of this Wild Card: 
Joe RAVETZ, University of Manchester, Interviewed by MIoIR

Likelihood timeframe and scenario features : 
now-2025

Wild Card's description: 

In previous centuries, people’s mental framework was kept in place by the class system, the dominant ideology and particularly by religion. Everybody went to church on Sunday and the church organised differences between people, so organised the Christians to hate the Jews, etc., but people were helped to organise their lives and their way of thinking. Now religion is in decline in most of the western world, and there is an infinite choice of communications and media, and breakdown in many social and cultural groups. I would predict with high probability some kind of wild card about a rapid increase in mental illness, alienation and depression. This could have all sorts of other effects on the economy and politics.