From the Faded Drabs of Certainty
The world as the old order knew it collapsed in flames with the African crisis. The burgeoning economic engine of Africa, a sand behemoth layed on the foundations of foreign investments, collapsed disgracefully when foreign banks failed. With almost all powers exporting their economic and industrial burdens to the African continent, the recipe for disaster was known and set. The world had only the time to pick up the pieces and start anew.
The world has coalesced from the doubt that cast the world into disorder, only to rise back up into darkness. The European subcontinent and surrounding regions, once a slew of small states tied together by a weak regional bureaucracy has federalized in the face of a blight that sees no culture or race. In the face of economic and social disaster, and a market so unstable regular commodities could collapse and rise in manner of minutes, the one thing Europe could not put a price on was order. With the democratic system clearly failing and further libertarian experiments producing lackluster results, the continents of pioneers would take the first steps into the new age. Technocratic Bureaucracy has proven successful in keeping out the economic woes of a collapsed industrial world, but has built in it's place an unfeeling government. People can go about their daily lives, but live in constant fear of monitoring by drone-police that tap in to their every conversation and listen to conversations that put the safety of the state at risk. Most often, they are ignored, but those who are unlucky enough to be considered a threat to the state are removed, swiftly and brutally, their deaths never explained to friends or family.Technocratic Bureaucracy has seen success around the world, adopted by Europe's Canadian, Turkic, and Brazilian allies.
Some states believe that the African crisis was caused not by the woes of unregulated capitalism, but capitalism not truly free of the chains of morality. India, largely unaffected by the African crisis, due to it's inherit mistrust of foreign outsourcing, survived the fall of the old order with little lost. As Africa fell into anarchy and warlordism, India sprung, and for a time had half the continent under it's thumb. The corporatism of old can still be observed in India and it's allies, the Maneuverist ideology of conquest by market rather than military power proving successful so far.
Some states have decided to transcend the old ways rather than emulate them, establishing states that push the meaning of human to it's logical extreme. Technocracy and the subsequent rise of experts has seen a completely different class divide, with people competing for the best mods to further their skills, a system just a flawed the meritocracy of the past.
Yet again, some states refuse to move on at all. The US experienced a fall from grace but subsequently rose with the RadMod revolution, a doctrine of extreme anti-extremism that has proven eerily akin to the totalitarian societies of the past.
The world is in a predicament that it has yet to solve. But the ashes of an ordered tired of conflict and endless strife may see it replaced before the century ends.