It is also helpful to look at some really bad periods and compare to today.
These were some horrible times in Europe.
Each had profound consequences all across the spectrum - economics, politics, religion, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe1300s.
How policy drives everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_VienneThe Templars were the largest multinational corporation at the time. Philip systematically dismantled the large non-state organizations of his day thus leaving Europe with no social capital.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315%E2%80%931317
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Deathhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Late_Middle_Ages1600s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Agehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
And long ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_CivilizationAnd a very influential work that tried to synthesize from many fields and is still very influential today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_%28book%29
Our tribal past is still very much with us:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experimenthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments