As far as violence goes, I postulate there’s a threshold, a bit like the Reynolds Number in fluid mechanics, where things will transition quickly to a new mode. Peace is laminar flow. War is turbulence. If we could somehow nondimensionalize the amount of violent undercurrent in a society, and ascertain a tipping point analogous to Re=3000 in physics, it would be tremendously useful.

I don’t have the facilities to tool that out.