Four Lessons For 2026

Yes, like the Four Horsemen...

Planet Volumes for Unsplash+

2025 has been a remarkable year. The US economy continued to outperform economists’ dismal predictions of recession. Generative AI continued to underperform technologists’ confident forecasts of super-intelligence. A year with President Trump back in the White House was never going to be boring, but 2025 gave us more than we bargained for with tariff wars and diplomatic spats galore. It was all quite entertaining, but at the end of it all most people seem dissatisfied and pessimistic, judging from surveys, media articles and dinner conversations — maybe that’s why US consumers are spending like there is no tomorrow…. So we might want to take these four lessons to heart as we enter 2026.

The Age of Emotion

We have left the Age of Reason and plunged heart-first into the Age of Emotion. Emotions drive the way we consume news, our positions on key issues, our approach to technology, the political debate at the national and global level, and even policy making. You’d never guess that we have more data and better analytical tools than ever.

The Trump administration’s entire policy agenda seems framed in terms of emotions. It levies tariffs to punish countries that have been “taking advantage” of us, and deports hard-working immigrants in a visceral reaction against a “foreign invasion.” The starting point is always a valid concern, but the reaction is emotional, never rational.

Europe’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is entirely emotional: Russia is bad and must be punished; Europe must stay on “the right side of history.” Instead of holding rational discussions on how to reach a pragmatic settlement to avoid future strife, European leaders are ranting that the continent must prepare for war.

Policy makers are just the mirror of their societies. We trust Generative AI to answer our every question and fret it will take away every job. Political polarization remains extreme. Our attitudes to immigration, climate, energy policy, Israel-Gaza, taxes and the cost of living are dictated by emotions, not reason.

As GenAI and social media make it increasingly hard to distinguish facts from made-up clickbait, this trend will inevitably intensify. Since we don’t seem to like the results all that much, in 2026 let’s fight this trend, and try to…just think a bit more.

Apocalypse addiction

Dominated by emotion, we’ve developed an addiction to impending apocalyptic scenarios. Until recently, climate change was the Armageddon of choice. Now scientists warn that AI will soon enslave us — or condemn us to mass unemployment and unprecedented social injustice. The fact that the best AI can’t even run a vending machine doesn’t shake our conviction that it’s ready to rule the world.

The intensity of our existential anxiety is matched by our unwillingness to take any costly corrective action. We claim that greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet to destruction, but still take that cheap flight to an air-conditioned hotel room in Florence. And unlike the Luddites of old, we’ve embraced ChatGPT as our best friend.

In 2026, let’s focus on concrete problems that we’re actually willing to address.

Trade-off aversion

In the same vein, we systematically refuse to acknowledge trade-offs. President Trump wants to reduce Americans’ cost of living, but won’t give up the tariffs and immigration restrictions that push up prices. Europe wants to be a geopolitical superpower, but won’t downsize its social welfare to spend more on defense. Voters protest higher taxes but won’t support any cuts in public spending.

This trade-off aversion fuels a search for easy solutions which push the problems further into the future and come with unforeseeable unintended consequences. Ever-rising public debt levels. A pill to change our body without changing lifestyle. GenAI programs to get easy answers without learning anything.

For 2026, let’s print Thomas Sowell’s quote “there are no solutions, only trade offs,” and tape it to the bathroom mirror.

The persistence of history

In 1931, Salvador Dalí painted “The persistence of memory”, popularly known as “the melting clocks”. Today that fascinating painting evokes the melting international order, with its fraying norms and crumbling institutions, and the corresponding collapse of confidence and social order across western countries.

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Fukuyama’s “The end of history” remains perhaps the greatest example of intellectual hubris on record. The rise of Asia is reshaping the world economy and global geopolitics. Liberal democracies have lost their shine and their conviction: they are underperforming autocratic China, and are themselves turning increasingly illiberal, with Trump bending legal norms and Europe embracing censorship. European leaders talk of an upcoming war with Russia, the US deploys military force in its backyard.

The lazy, fashionable argument is that Trump has brought us back to a “might is right” law of the jungle. There is some truth to this, but the problem runs much deeper. Now that the US is no longer the sole superpower, the jungle is just regaining its customary threatening contours. Inadequate political leadership across the West has multiplied the risks with its pitiful handling of foreign policy, economic policy, immigration policy and more. The world is becoming a more dangerous place. Monsters we hoped we’d buried long ago are crawling out of caves, and we foolishly cheer them back to life.

History never ends. Life can still be nasty and brutish, though no longer quite as short. Human nature hasn’t changed in the past two-thousand years. That’s not a disaster, it can still allow for a largely peaceful existence with improving living standards. But we need to work for it.

Let’s cheer up. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just the end of another year. History goes on. In 2026, let’s try to steer it in the right direction.

Happy 2026!!!

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash