No, Umair, our societies are not dying. They are starting to metamorphose into something unimaginably different.

When a caterpillar spins its pupa and falls asleep, it probably thinks it's dying. Metamorphosis is a very violent kind of change - the fact that butterflies are pretty makes us sentimentalise the change.

Inside the pupa, the caterpillar's body breaks down into a kind of cellular soup. In among the chaos are the clumps of stem cells that will eventually become a butterfly.

Societies do this too and part of that process is often a civil war as the cells from the past battle it out with the cells of the future.

There are no guarantees. The butterfly may never emerge - it may not have gained enough weight and so will starve and die. It may have been parasitised and will die.

The English Civil War is a good example of this kind of thing. The Cavaliers were "wrong but romantic." The Roundheads (Parliamentarians) were "right but repulsive." Parliament had the cities, the King had the rural areas - and the King lost. He was executed and Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England (he turned down a crown.) Until his death in 1658 he ruled as a dictator through the Major Generals. After it became obvious that his son was not able to succeed him, a coalition of influential men led by General Monck brought back the Monarchy.

Afterwards England was a very different place and the Restoration made Charles II a constitional(ish) monarch, followed by the Glorious Revolution which completed the process.

Nobody looking at England in 1650 could have imagined the Restoration of 1660, nor the immense wealth that flooded the country afterwards from the slave trade and trade generally.

Something like 300,000 people died in the English Civil War - hundreds of thousands more were ruined or fled to North America. From the two enemies of the 1630s, the Royalists and Parliamentarians, a completely new state emerged which was pragmatic, ruthless and virulently Protestant - and an odd amalgam of the two.

I suspect the USA has to go through a second civil war to reconcile the two sides. It might be short and sharp or it might rumble on for decades - I don't know. I really hope not.

However wherever you find that kind of polarisation and loss of trust in a nation, you often find a civil war breaking out.

The cities will probably win but there are no guarantees in a fight - anyone can win.

Sometimes you get transformation from a metamorphosis. Sometimes you just get a mess.