As is boringly customary at this time of year, we tend to look back on the year being laid to rest. We, or some of us, dip into an imaginary crystal ball to see what 2025 has in store for us.
From our experience of recent events, we do not need too many workable crystal balls to know that more of the same is in store. That more is to come. If it weren't for the decency my editor expects from his contributors, the above-mentioned word "laid" would be used in its vulgar sense. It would be an apt way to describe our local state of affairs, that all of us are being taken for a true ride.
Furthermore we, as a whole nation, have truly laid our soul to rest. We seem to have become immune and oblivious to all nefarious deeds. The shadier the ones at the top are, the less we seem to worry, care or do anything.
2024 was an impressively bad year. Even beyond these shores there hasn't been much to cheer. In addition to the silly citizens of this isle, all earthlings have had a rather raw deal.
Earth, this huge rock which keeps us going, which sustains us, which is needed for our life and for our future, keeps getting battered. Along with the use of fossil fuels, our profligate living will probably decrease the lifespan of the world as we know it. The sustainability of our species is quickly disappearing, yet we look the other way, go on as normal and trust that all will be well after all.
We, these intelligent humans who mastered the world and even ventured into space in search of newer territory, have played our cards wrong. We thought nature would just be our slave, that we are after all masters of all we survey. But, while we go on doing it all our way even if the earth pleads for a different course, nature keeps showing over and over again that it will wreak its revenge on us.
Cyclones, unbearable heat, drought, flooding, and more of nature's extremes, prove that, batter our world as we may, it is definitely mightier, scarier, and knows no mastery.
The earth itself, will keep hurtling away with or without us, if we destroy its habitat. We might disappear but earth won't. Vegetation or some form of lifeforce will, most probably, survive any cataclysm, human made or not. It will go on, as it did way before we started our human journey, for long aeons to come.
Yet on we go drilling for more oil, fracking, doing all we can to speed up the process of nature's way with us. While all this goes on, instead of us getting together as a global population with an uncertain future, wars keep being started, countries invaded, killings abound. Instead of trying to stop and take stock of all there is that threatens humans from leading a decent life, we add tension, misery, famine, mayhem.
The world keeps spending more money on wars, brutality and terror on people.
Politically, here in Malta, as well as internationally, the rogues keep getting elected, applauded, given more power.
If the world does it why don't we is the local mantra. We pay lip service to go green, but all we do is ruin all our greenery, all our trees, all our open spaces. We build away to give a better life to our children, to make them feel rich in material essence yet what we are doing is making sure their future is fantastically poor in wellbeing. If, that is, they have a future.
This does not spell a good ending to the year or augur a bright new beginning. But ideally - yes, even in gloom one should not just look at the doom - we should try harder to force change.
We should individually, in groups, in societies, as people and as countries, fight to stop all that is harmful to us and to others. We should all strive to save even what sounds and seems unsalvageable.
We should fight our inertia, push for better ways, cleaner energy, better air quality. We should fight against our own self-destruction.
Is it doable? Is it too late? Is it too much? Maybe. But, at least, we can feel and say that we tried to do something better in 2025 and the following years. Happy New Year and let's think positive even if surrounded by negativism (including my own end of year article) and a world in crisis.
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