It Is What It Is: 2025 was Not That Much Different From Years Past — a Smorgasbord of Folly, Fortitude and Tenacity

As humanity commemorates the completion of another of mother earth’s trip around the sun, it dawned on me that the infinitesimal spec that I am on this water and mud ball, and all that I claim to know, will one day be extinguished in a blink of an eye, by time.

So I revisited something I wrote about two decades ago to see how far I had travelled. While some things had clearly changed, fundamentally most had remained the same. Other than the fact that I had grown older and so had people around me, humanity in general had not shifted course by that much.

Today with talk about AI altering our trajectory (hyped to the hilt), all it has done is only complicate how we contemplate our future. Much like at the dawn of the atomic age, the possibilities of what AI can do, has only brought us to the cusp of maybe extinguishing ourselves with more precision than before. Unless something else does us in first.

Two decades ago the human population had not surpassed seven billion and the prospects of its survival were less dismal than they are today.

We have burnt carbon and discarded plastic like an alcoholic and now earth’s veins are clogging up and the signs of an imminent cardiac arrest emerge everyday.

Seventy percent of the planet is under the grip of some kind of authoritarian retrograde rule, that is interested only in burning more fossil fuels and lining pockets with its proceeds. The idea of working together to heal the planet via cooperation is no longer under consideration. The recent debacle at the COP30 summit made this abundantly clear.

But there is one thing that keeps the human spirit alive, the indomitable faith in the idea of “hope”.

Hope, that it can change the path of things to come with ingenious innovation. 

Humanity embodies the audacity that no matter the odds, it can win back time by challenging nature itself. And then there is the arrogance in some, that believe not much has actually changed and life will go on as it has for centuries. If push comes to shove we shall adapt using technology. This is a popular myth bought and peddled by many in power today and their “blind leading the blind” entourage.

Humanity is no monolith. It is but a sum of diverse flawed individuals. A smorgasbord of folly, fortitude and formidable tenacity. And so 2025 was not that much different from years past.

While there is relative peace, authoritarianism, fascism and right-wing politics are on the march once again with renewed strength. Democracy and the rule of law is in retreat. Justice has become a rare commodity.

Natural and man made calamities made their mark like clockwork. War, hunger, poverty, migration, rape and genocide reminded us yet again of our insatiable appetite for evil.

Yes, humanity has conquered many diseases and continues to create miracle medicines. The recent pandemic was conquered with rapid advancement showing what is possible when faced with acute global adversity. The Internet is changing the very fabric of society in some positive ways, space exploration is advancing science, some rich people are pledging more of their money to do good on a global scale, some nations are taking climate change seriously, some rain forests are being conserved and some endangered species are returning from the brink. More people are living in relative peace and security around the planet in a century. Probably this is why the human population rapidly grows, forecasted to reach 9 billion in the next few decades.

While there is relative peace, authoritarianism, fascism and right-wing politics are on the march once again with renewed strength. Democracy and the rule of law is in retreat. Justice has become a rare commodity. Identity politics, populism and religious tribalism are dividing people more than ever. Social media and its immediacy in polarizing the world, is a threat that cannot be taken lightly. Misinformation, conspiracy theories and agenda laced distortions are warping peoples ability to parse good from bad. “AI Slop” is creating a hellscape that is seducing and intoxicating people to “doom scroll” to oblivion.

Hollowed by consumerism, in search of spiritual solace, many are adrift finding meaning in archaic practices, decrepit soothsayers, false idols and dubious leaders. And the desire to believe in mythology with conviction, and less in evidence, is astonishingly high.

Humanity’s penchant for greed and corruption always looms large, and gets larger as some nations experience an uneven and artificial phenomenon known as an “economic boom”. Consumption and the aspiration to live like the west, is reaching new highs, hoodwinking nations and peoples to gamble their resources in that pursuit.

For nations that have always taken tomorrow’s sunrise for granted, things seem uncertain. The less fortunate amassing at their borders, suck compassion out of even the most generous, leading masked men to hunt down people to put them in cages.

Populists looking to get re-elected pass degenerate policies deluding their citizens with the promise of glory days to come, only if we just closed our borders.

So when, where and how do we begin to build for a better future from the present and change course? When do we begin to look at ourselves beyond the trappings of power, politics, greed, religion, dogma and division and think of ourselves as the one ocean rising. When do we begin to accept that our progress and problems are interconnected and that borders are imaginary lines on paper. When do we recognize that no nation is immune to the ebb and flow of economic and social upheaval. And when do we wake up to the realization that walls do not work.

And so heading into another year of unknowns, instead of making new resolutions, if we as a species can acknowledge what it means to be just human, much would have been achieved.

The recently released film Nuremberg, revisits The Nuremberg Trials from 1946, when the surviving members of the Nazi Party high command were put on trial, to show the world the atrocities they had unleashed on their fellow human beings. The “hope” was that if they were tried in a court of law, instead of just being hung without due process, the world would get to see the evil these seemingly ordinary men had committed, and probably learn from it being laid bare.

The film is a cautionary tale, meditating on the present with a looking glass from the past.

The film ends with a poignant quote from the philosopher historian R. G. Collingwood

“The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”

It is what it is.

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Anand Kamalakar is a Brooklyn based documentary film director, producer and editor. His film OSBORNE will premiere on PBS nationwide next year.