When I was a youngster, I was often amazed at oldtimers saying, “I don’t understand the world any longer!” Hadn’t they over the years learnt the lesson that the world was ever changing and that you had to adapt to the changes? To my surprise, I have begun to nurture the same feeling this passed year! There is hardly anything left from the world of yesteryears, a world I had learned to love and live cosily within! I should, of course, have seen it coming; the whole last decade was nought but a build-up of events that led to his new world! But the past twelve months have made it clear that this buildup has become inevitable, that a profoundly changed world is here to stay.
The global superpowers have ceased to pretend that there is international law and order to bind them all. Instead, they are playing a brutal geopolitical power game at the expense of smaller nations, not to speak of the peoples of the planet. The great oligopolies in traditional energy markets have finally succeeded in manipulating public opinion, driven by totally corrupt political moguls (at least one of them), and, as a result, the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels appears to be slowing, if not coming to a complete standstill. Our own politicians in the West are forever luring their voters into believing that all government expenses are a free lunch, be they military build-up, climate actions or ever-increasing welfare benefits, and that there is absolutely no need to prioritise and keep public budgets under control. In Europe, productivity has come to a standstill, with the enterprise sector more content to accept demanding subsidies than to do its job of innovating and advancing production processes.
As a result, I have a strong feeling that a perfect storm of political, natural, and financial crises is brewing and may erupt into chaos in the near future. Let us hope that the inevitable eruption does not occur next year, so that we can enjoy at least another twelve months of personal peace and happiness. In this sense, I invite you to join me in a solemn prayer for a
Happy Year 2026
