Interesting how people who have been through acute hardship, meaning random and senseless death of their immediate community, are less apathetic. Ie your parents', my grandparents', generation. Something about the human animal does poorly with existential precarity but no actual hardship.
If you are any good at mechanical engineering or math, you can find a job in those fields. If you're not very good, learn Javascript. It works itself out.
I think you are on to something in your second sentence. To what extent do you perceive these social effects being a result of the cultural character of those places that your classmates or their parents have emigrated from? It seems that affluent (or at least professional class) immigrants of the past three decades are very attuned to status/conformity, and so your experience may well be outside the 'norm' of the US. Keep your mind open as you grow up and meet people from across this country, there is an exciting amount of thought/values diversity if one looks for it in good faith. Focus on the upsides in the hyper-competitive nature of your current peers, they will hopefully mellow with age and wisdom (and will be extremely capable!).
Maybe he thinks that this would be many separate conflicts because of the different powers that partook and over different decades? Does seem to be a big deal.
I think the ties that bind in the Anglosphere are pretty much done for. These countries are basically malls that people move-to to get stuff, I think we need a little more collectivism - at least on the state/provincial level to be better balanced (US perspective).
You should read 'The Storm Before the Storm' by Mike Duncan. It details the fall of the Roman Republic and highlights the role played by land consolidation and the social dislocation that gave rise to the empire. For better or worse, it was definitely less stable.
I lived in Vancouver, BC for three years having moved from Ames, Iowa. It was my first longish-term experience in a big city in which poor people are 'atomized' by their inability to make due in their current circumstances.The USA and Canada are big places, and I think that problems are more regional (varying widely intrastate/intraprovince) than the huge nets we draw around nation-states. My only takeaway from Van and Ontario are that Canada has a housing/employment location problem that needs addressing!
I can't really speak from experience on the Canadian mid-major metros, as I only experienced 'big' Vancouver. But there is a bevy of American cities where you can actually save and have little ones (Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Sun Belt, Des Moines). Maybe it's like that in Ontario? Anyways, looking over the next twenty years of my life, the opportunity cost of living in Vancouver was huge, and not just because of the exchange rate.
It's not quite that rosy on the guns and butter issues there. I moved to Van for grad school from the Midwest looking for opportunity, worked for two years after my degree and then moved back stateside. One makes so little money there, housing is really steep, and it's hard to responsibly start a family. But you do get to feel good about that other stuff.