The world seems to have gone nuts over the last few years. I’ve heard a lot of people say something along those lines.
Has the world really gone mad? Is it madder than say five years ago? Or does it just seem like that, because we’ve been through the traumatising covid experience (no matter how you look at it), and our world is so hyperconnected, and our brains are constantly bombarded with information leaving us simply overwhelmed?
Did people living through the latter part of the 1930s think the world was going crazy? I grew up during the Cold War – I think people were saying it then too.
Of course, it’s all relative. It depends on many factors, including where you live, and what is happening, but I do think that the fact that we can experience live what’s happening on the other side of the world can make us feel like everything is happening in our own lives. We can’t switch off, because every catastrophe is immediately in our face, nonstop.
Covid with all the associated fallout is just the major example. Now we’re in the grip of the craze of AI – hardly a day goes by without some big story about how AI is going to change how we live and work, or how it’s going to doom us to oblivion.
It’s extremes, black and white thinking, and fear mongering everywhere you look: the ridiculous gender debates, the unhinged climate hysteria, the very real power grabs and the undermining of fundamental human rights by national governments and quasi world governmental organisations like the UN and the WHO; some societies seem to be literally self-destructing under incompetent governments, for example Germany; the ongoing censorship efforts by governments and private organisations to silence anyone who doesn’t agree with the loopy woke culture agenda that, ironically, represents the height of intolerance and virtue signalling; the noticeable erosion of political, cultural, judicial, educational and science institutions that are bowing to wokeism; the peddling of unrealistic and self-destructive energy, social, economic and other policies; the comatose state of journalism.
Then there’s the madness of the current political flashpoints – the US government’s proxy war in Ukraine with its long-anticipated war in Iran only a question of time, the unspeakable irony of what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza, the sense that somehow, sooner or later, there will be a major conflict involving China, probably over Taiwan.
The pot appears to be full of lunacy and this concoction is simmering dangerously. Will the next four years of Trump bring it to boil over? That seems to be the biggest fear of most people.
I’m no fan (why does one have to state this not to be misunderstood?), but I think, provided Trump stays alive for another four years, he could certainly shake things up. What the powers that be hate most about him, I suspect, is that he’s unpredictable and not just a puppet on a string, but he’s rational, and he picks his battles carefully. The only thing that’s certain is that he will upset the established political elite, and seeing that play out will be interesting.
Personally, I’m hopeful that peak insanity is already behind us. Even in 2024 I think I’ve seen the first signs that the pushback has seriously begun. More and more people are seeing through the absurdities and ‘voting’ with their feet and through their actions. And those propagating nonsense are starting to get worried.
In a recent article I came across, titled ‘Climate change isn’t woke’, the author comes to the conclusion that “climate action is under threat” but, with his head firmly planted in the ground, he has nothing more to offer than more of the same old propaganda – the kind that’s increasingly wearing thin.
There is hope, because you really cannot fool all the people all the time.
