2026 will go down in history as a far more important date than 1989 and everyone around me seems oblivious and doesn't care

The world order is breaking down. There are no line changes on maps (yet), but the implications for the next century and beyond are probably far more far reaching and profound than the breakup of the Soviet Union.

It is hard to even know how to talk about this with other people. It seems so abstract, but in my gut, for the first time in my life, I feel significantly less safe (and yes that has been a deep privilege). The prospects for our shared global future seem worse. Likely poorer, more violent, and, with the breakdown of the US security umbrella and subsequent nuclear proliferation, at much greater risk of nuclear annihilation.

I studied emergent systems in grad school: some changes are irreversible. We are not one election away from "going back."

I feel a sense of mourning and I feel ridiculous for it. Nothing in my immediate material world has changed. But everything has. In the past I wondered what it was like to live in the 400s and live through an epochal transition: now I know.