The Year the World Broke

Hi! How's everyone? Here's a big new year hug from Snowy—and me. How have you been? We had a gentle and fun holiday season. But the world...didn't.

How to make sense of the world now? Even the last few days? What’s happening to America—and to civilization?

The discussion we are going to have is going to be upsetting. Do not read this if you are already feeling shaky.Sometimes, perhaps, it’s better not to know, or at least not until you’re ready.

Are you ready? Then let us begin. 

2025 was a turning point in human history. Do you remember when I used to teach you this? That it would be? And now here we are. We will live in its aftermath. In 2026, the world will destabilize now very, very fast.

The world broke in 2025. And it will never be the same again. Let us trace some of the ways. Here, we’ll discuss things in the way that I once tried to teach you: the great macro trends shaping our world.

After the disastrous re-election in America, all the following things happened rapidly. The world fractured geopolitically, economically, and financially. Growth, already anemic, turned stagflationary. The world’s fight against climate change came to an end. Democracy went into shock globally. To the point that America now has the kind of fascist collapse in which it’s abducting foreign heads of state for lebensraum, which harks back to the Nazi justification for war and plunder, too.

I could go on, but I want you to understand the point.

The trajectory of human civilization has now been altered irrevocably. A great age of progress has now come to a screeching, crashing end. This is a statistical fact, in all the ways above. No more wasting time nitpicking with me. Understand me, this time.

Now. The old trajectory of human civilization looked something like this. Progress was being made, if in patches, at greater and greater cost, sacrifice, and price. Still, the old macro trends—the pre-2025 ones—allowed for a multiplicity of futures. Some were better, some were pretty good, and some were bad.

But now things have changed, and they have changed radically, dramatically, and permanently. The shape of our macro trends does not allow for a multiplicity of futures. It points to only one.

The future now looks like this. It is the worst case scenario.

Fascists and authoritarians vie for the resources of a dying planet. 

This is where we are now. I tire of having to soften the blow for those weak of intellect and spirit. 

Let me say it again so that you understand it well. Fascists are now vying for control over the resources of a dying planet. This is where our civilization is now. It is a bleak place to be. And yet it will define this decade, and perhaps much more.

Let me shade that picture in for you. 

The USA is now trying to attain control of the America. China, of Asia. And Russia, of Europe.

These are three failed states. They resemble each other in eerie ways. Neither has any real safety nets, no functioning social contract, and no source of growth left. Their people are baffled, bewildered, miserable, and angry. There appears to be no future. Systems have failed catastrophically. And therefore, they are now contesting control of resources. That contest will only grow more and more severe. 

Each of these failed states is now trying to construct its own “sphere,” which is just a modern word for empire, really.

And so in the future we are now heading into, all the poisons of history combine into one.

Fascism and authoritarianism. Serfdom and servitude. War and violence. Empire and imperial ambition and hubris. 

Each of these failed states, trying to construct its own “sphere,” or empire, will necessarily lead to conflict. Let us hope that it doesn’t erupt into World War, though of course, that’s looking more likely by the day. The point is how all these macro trends intersect now, and become a kind of widening gyre, a vicious circle, a black hole.

Conflict eats up the energy, money, and time of a society or a civilization. When we are investing in conflict, of course, we are not investing in the things, really, of progress. And in that sense, the future is now a foregone conclusion, which is that investment in the goods that we need most as a civilization to stay one will continue to decline, now at an accelerating rate.

Let me put that to you more formally. In 2025, we lost all hope of having what are known as “global public goods.” These are basic foundations like peace, stability, growth, cooperation, law, order, justice, at a global level. Global public goods are now in severe decline. And with them comes an end to progress for our civilization. 

They are what make a civilization one.

As progress becomes regress, so, too, the clock rewinds, and all the old poisons of history are forced down the throat of time. This is the moment we find ourselves at.

The question isn’t, for example, will the future be more democratic, more peaceful, more just, more civilized, but how much less it will be. Catastrophically, over the next few years, or just ruinously slow? Will the implosion be fast and sharp, or slow, bumpy, and juddering?

What does a civilization without global public goods look like? Invert them, and you will see the pattern of the future we now face. Peace becomes conflict. Stability, geopolitically, financially, economically, becomes instability. Growth becomes stagnation and then depression. Cooperation becomes isolationism and imperialism. Order becomes disorder, chaos, and ultimately, a Darwinian contest of survival of the most violent, brutish, and stupid.

So. Here is what we face. Three failing mega-states vie for empires, to control what’s left on a dying planet. A vicious cycle that accelerates rates of collapse and implosion.

The other future, of course, looked like this. We cooperated as a world to create a future, a genuine one, where we reimagined growth, reinvented our social contracts, and continued the trajectory of progress. We educated every child on the planet, invested in science, literature, art, and therefore, carried ourselves to new heights. Living standards soared, instead of stagnated and fell.

Let us take America as an example of all the above. What does its future look like? Americans now face technofeudalism domestically. They are essentially people held in perpetual debt servitude to a class of barons and lords who control technological and financial capital. And of course, in a society like that, living standards plummet, because life is worth nothing to begin with. As a result, such a society becomes hostile to the world around it, seeking conquest, as its own people have been bled dry. Hence, the impetus for war and empire. Shall Canada be the 51st State? How about Greenland? How many wars will Trump start in 2026, to divert from an economy that’s not just “unaffordable,” but now feudal-serf?

We had another future.

But that was before. Just as I warned you, 2025 was a turning point in human history. And it went as wrong a way as it could have gone.

We have no other future now. Because the following dynamics are all but certain. We will face severe climate change, meaning, accelerating feedbacks, taking us to catastrophic levels. As neo-empires vie for conquest of a dying planet’s resources, growth will shrink and decline. Democracy will continue its freefall, as America, Russia, and China all turn the world increasingly against it. Geopolitical instability will accelerate. Economies will sunder. And our civilization’s finances, already parlous, will soon enough reach breaking point. That will include you, by the way,

In all this, perhaps you see abstraction. But I see a terrible wave of suffering. And my heart is broken for it. I was one of those who believed in the other future. The good and noble and beautiful one. 

And for many years, I tried to teach and warn you, as best I could. I failed. We failed. You can judge for yourself if you failed. The point is not recrimination. It is simply to hold ourselves to account, faithfully, in what we have been, will be, and can be. 

Those of us who believed in the other future—I think that we are all suffering terribly these days. We aren’t allowed to talk about it much. Hey, which celebrity has a new underwear line? Wow! I wonder how many of us there are left now. Brave in intellect and true in spirit. Who value civilization. And how many have already have grown enfeebled enough in mind and spirit to accept the poison as good enough. 

Have we already surrendered?

Here is what I think. 

We are committing suicide as a civilization. Perhaps that is why my heart is broken. I understand Cicero now, watching Rome fall. I understand Brecht, watching the Nazis march. Or perhaps my heart is this broken now simply because it was foolish to have believe in something better than all this at all. 

Hey, let’s just ask ChatGPT about it! Why bother thinking at all, if you are just to be a serf, on a dying planet of fascist empires battling for the last drops of oil, the last rocks to crack open, in the last slivers of mud, on the desolate ruins of what once was? 

You want to know what all this means for money, and I’ll teach you about that too. The financial consequences of this hypertransformation from a multiplicity of futures to the worst case scenario will leave many, many people impoverished, of course, and Americans are already feeling the beginnings of all that, much to their shock. But I want to go much deeper than money now.

The hard part, I suspect, for intelligent and thoughtful people, is what is left of us in the soul. How do make our peace? With what is left of the world and its future now? Can we? Should we? Shall we just give up, like so many around us appear to have done? 

Shall we shrug, watch the fascists march, the planet die, and history rewind right back to serfdom, and warm ourselves in the narcotic glow of what dregs of life the techno-barons and the authoritarians and the warmongers have left to us? 

And is that, too, what I mean when I say: we’re committing suicide as a civilization?

Or does this moment demand better, especially from us, especially now?

There I am at the cafe, every day, brooding. Over all this. Haunted by it. It never leaves me. Over the cat and mouse game that so many of you played with me over the years. I struggled to convey to you the gravity of what you would face. Forgive me. I have only little things, called words. 

Now you must not fail yourself, my friends.

All that I ever have been trying to give is courage, strength, and wisdom. Take it from me. Plant its seeds in the soil. Soon the earth will shake. Can you feel it trembling already? 

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)

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