Few would have expected 2011 to be very different from the preceding year. Many were pessimistic about the year ahead, and pessimism breeds in us a weary resignation to the belief that little in the world can be changed or will change.

But this year, if it can be made to fit any description at all, was a year of surprises that challenged our understanding of the world. The rather linear trajectory with which our minds typically project general trends was knocked onto a different path by what can perhaps only be described as free will.

In Europe, the agency of the individual worked to undermine government efforts – inadequate, to be sure – to restore financial stability to several troubled eurozone countries. Flagging confidence in the ability of certain national treasuries to service their debts turned to panic at the start of 2011, as it quickly became clearer than ever that Greece wouldn’t be able to dig its way out of the crisis. The fear spread to other hitherto stable economies like Cyprus by way of a devastating explosion and then, by summer, to a core eurozone economy – Italy.

In the Arab world, a similar precipitation of popular sentiment – reflected not in market behaviour as in Europe but in spectacular public manifestations – also demonstrated the power of human agency over broader social structures. As evidenced, for example, by Europe’s policy of deep cooperation with the authoritarian governments in our southern neighbourhood, they were largely expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future. With a tight grip on the economy, the lowest levels of media freedom in the world, and sweeping ‘emergency’ powers or plain rule by sheer force, many of these regimes were seen as unassailable.

This was true to such an extent that a whole body of literature developed around the question on whether Islam, the majority religion of all Arab countries, was incompatible with democracy. The examples of Turkey, Indonesia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina were evidence to the contrary but most Muslim-majority countries were so far from democratising that it has long been a commonly held belief, especially in Malta, that Islam and democracy could not go hand in hand. Perhaps that explained our surprise, and unpreparedness, for what happened in our neighbourhood.

Incidentally, before the financial crisis hit it had also become a commonly held belief that the western world had perfected the recipe for economic success and that crises were a thing of the past – from a time before we understood how economies really worked. That belief has been shaken to its core.

Yet fundamentally, what made the events of 2011 surprising was perhaps less due to our hubris but to the opposite flaw in our nature: The human penchant for accepting things as they are. The collapse of former financial giants, part of the world’s economic furniture for so long, surprised most of us for this reason. The fall of Gaddafi, Ben Ali, and Mubarak, part of the political furniture in our neighbourhood, again surprised us for this reason. The rapid fall of Greece, Spain and Ireland, from wealthy and fast growing eurozone economies to destitution was similarly difficult to accept. Spain, only a few years ago seen as Europe’s leading economic light, for the first time in decades has become a country of emigration.

At least, the events of 2011 shook Europe out of its relative complacency. What looks like a solution to the debt crisis was reached only a few weeks before the year’s end and we now have a reason to be hopeful that things will begin to improve over the course of next year. For many of our southern neighbours, the political change that began this year has not yet been consolidated. For some, it is still under way and may yet be nipped in the bud.

What is certain is that after a year like this, few of us will ever take the world at face value again. This is perhaps the most positive result of 2011, for taking things for granted breeds irresponsibility and recognising the importance of our own agency in the world – that is, each and every one of our choices – fosters responsibility.

David Casa is a Nationalist MEP