It is doubtful that there have been many times in history when people called out to each other in the street to congratulate each other on the wonderful times in which they lived.
As today, we have probably always wondered how we could be happy “with everything that is currently happening”, old people complaining that young people no longer respect anything, retaining only the beautiful memories.
How easy it is to forget, for example, that the mythical 1960s saw a whole series of violence, from the Vietnam War to the American race riots. There was also this “detail” of history, these thirty million victims of Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, of which Westerners knew nothing.
Continuous information
The increase in anxiety about the state of the world today is partly the result of the generalization of continuous information on a planetary scale. This means that a drama occurring at the other end of the universe, which we would have barely heard of in the past, will affect us deeply without our being able to do anything about it.
Worse, the repetition of the same news, in media on which we have become totally dependent, means that the twin towers of the Word Trade Center have fallen not once, on September 11, 2001, but hundreds of other times when the images of the drama are shown on television.
With the help of the climate and health crises, it is as if everyone now feels responsible – and guilty – for all the misfortunes of the world.
“To live happily, live hidden”, says the maxim. Rather, many now aspire to live in the light, model citizens informed of everything that is happening on the planet.
That being said, taking into account the dysfunctions that are accumulating at the end of 2022, it is difficult not to think that our world is objectively living through a very dangerous period, with the worst perhaps still to come.
Everything is going wrong !
PHOTO NOEL CELIS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Healthcare workers in a Beijing neighborhood under COVID-19 lockdown
China’s designs on Taiwan, which the United States has pledged to protect, appear more threatening than ever. This is all the more worrying since the Chinese superpower has sunk into the irrational with the zero COVID-19 strategy of this modern Mao, the omnipotent and worrying Xi Jinping.
Meanwhile, nuclearized North Korea, which usually does not do this without the implicit approval of its Chinese protector, is increasing its missile strikes ever closer to Japan.
Reactionary, misogynistic and almost nuclearized, the Iranian Islamic Republic is in the grip of a deeply destabilizing revolutionary agitation that this Middle Eastern power will try to relentlessly repress, with the considerable means at its disposal at home and in this region of the world.
Erdogan’s Turkey, another key regional power, is also increasingly aggressive, unafraid of blackmailing NATO members. She has just threatened her Greek neighbor with war, while continuing her vicious fight, wherever she can, against the Kurds and the Armenians.
And there is, of course, the Slavic megatragedy that we have been witnessing for almost a year, following the savage invasion of sister nation Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It looks like we’re settling into a trench warfare that could last for years.
The valiant successes of his army do not seem to encourage the Ukrainian president to negotiate while he is in a position of strength. There is concern about a Zelensky keen to recover Crimea and who almost regretted that the missiles that fell on a NATO member Poland were not launched by Russia.
Europe in danger
Which brings us to this Europe of which Ukraine and Russia are part, a continent deeply affected by this conflict, among other things in terms of energy.
Winter promises to be very distressing for this increasingly divided continent, with the German economic locomotive broken down, just like the reassuring Franco-German couple, and the economic collapse of the prestigious United Kingdom.
At the very least, two pieces of good news have just arrived from the American continent. Lula finally won over Bolsonaro in Brazil, while Donald Trump suffered a political setback in the midterm elections, reducing his chances of becoming president again in 2024.
This is fortunate because the return to power of the latter in such a volatile international context would substantially increase the risks that our world in turmoil will fall into a tragedy whose magnitude we dare not imagine.
However, Joe Biden’s honorable performance cannot dispel doubts about a second term for such an elderly president.
But let’s keep hope. Major periods of crisis such as the one the world is currently going through have often coincided in the past with the emergence of new leaders commensurate with these historic challenges.