2024 has been charged with emotion and geopolitical global events. Take a few minutes to view the video above from Time recapping the year.
We saw the wars in Ukraine and Gaza march on, the re-election of Donald Trump in the United States, and here in Canada, our Federal Liberal Party, or should I say Justin Trudeau’s Party, was able to stay in power despite continuous internal turmoil and surviving multiple non-confidence votes. The only bright star in North America is the election of Claudia Sheinbaum, the first female elected President of Mexico. That will be interesting how she will handle Donald Trump in the next year.
One of the big stories this year is the rise of AI (Artificial Intelligence) into the mainstream collective. We saw AI Developmental companies reach new heights like Nvidia. This seems to be the modern era of the gold rush. Software companies and corporations rushed to integrate AI into their systems. I was always of the opinion that when things are rushed, we should take a step back to really understand what is happening. I am for technological advancement, but I do have some concerns about AI. My main concern is that are humans going to become obsolete once robots take over the majority of our jobs, our manual jobs. In the past, people went from one industry to another (example from farming to manufacturing), however this time around where are all these manual job workers going to end up? Businesswise it makes sense for a business to invest in such technology because on the long run it will lower your production costs while at the same time increase productivity. The corporations are reacting to multiple studies claiming that productivity has diminished as a collective since the pandemic. Here is one study tackling the productivity issue in Canada. I guess that is why business are hoping AI will fill in the gap for the lower productivity. I do not know what the correct course of action is, but we should advance with caution instead of going all in as if we are playing poker. A mistake here might be brutal. It is not a game when you are playing with the well being of people. This reminds me of the Electric Car frenzy from a couple of years ago. The population was encouraged to purchase electric cars to realise that we did not produce enough electricity to charge all these cars if we met out set target.
2024 was marked again by climate related events: an increase in tornadoes, forest fires, hurricanes and flash flooding to name a few. 2024 has been a hottest year ever recorded. You could be a climate change denier however, you can not refute the fact that the climate is changing around the globe and it is getting hotter every year. We are now pasted trying to prevent it from happening and need to adapt our cities and lives to the new reality. People can deny it all they want, but flash flooding and torrential downpours have become a new fact of life. Our politicians are starting to discuss this but without any urgency. In my hometown of Montreal, Quebec, the majority of our houses have basements. We have had a notable increase in torrential downpours in the region for the past few years causing most of our basements to flood. The city solution is to stop renting and living in the basements to avoid any major losses in the event that the basements get flooded. A simplest solution to a complex problem. Again, I do not know the solution to this, but together as a society I am sure we can come up with suitable solutions. It does not help when the infrastructure (sewer system) in Montreal was neglected for decades. This is one example that we need to adapt instead of just hoping it will go back to normal. Until our politicians take this climate change threat seriously, we might get to the point where even adapting to it might be too late.
All this sounds quite depressing, right? I think the majority of people feel this way and that is why this year people expressed their desire for things to change. There has been an uprising of civil unrest right across the globe. The average working class is being squeezed so much while on the other spectrum the wealthy appear to be getting wealthier. You see mergers happening between corporations not for millions of dollars but for billions of dollars. Sports athletes getting millions of dollars to entertain, earning more than our doctors and nurses. This is what is wrong with our society and that is why most democracies in the world has been shaken up and saw the rise to the right-wing parties. The distribution of wealth is definitely uneven, and greed definitely is a leading force in all that. It says a lot about a society when the US is willing to vote in and re-elect Donald Trump instead of the status quo. As a collective, we seem to have forgotten about World War 2 and its consequences. When you read about the sentiment prior to World War 2, it is very comparable to what we are currently living through. The fabric of our society appears to be deteriorating. Once we lose faith in our institutions, it is a matter of time that it all falls apart. We are now living in uncertain times. Hopefully we will be able to get though it without too much damage.
Before sharing my thoughts on 2025, I found this video on YouTube from Recollection Road – Entertainment on all the stars we lost in Memoriam in 2024. Surprisingly, there are quite a few. Check it out in this video montage below:
2025 HOPE
2025 will be the continuation of 2024, a world dealing with inequality and climate change. Inflation slowed down a bit in 2024 resulting in lower interest rates, but at the same time showed its stubbornness. In 2024, stock markets and the bitcoin rose to record highs. I think the markets will cool off a bit in 2025 due to the global uncertainty. Natural disasters will continue to increase and once Donald Trump is officially sworn in as the new President of the United States, well chaos will certainly follow.
Honestly, with all this uncertainty, no one can accurately predict what will happen in 2025. We hope that the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza come to an end. We hope that the cost of living at a minimum becomes stable and stop increasing. My biggest hope of 2025 that as a collective, we stop being aggressive towards each other, both online and in the real world. The only way we will see the light at the end of the tunnel is if we speak to each other and come up with collaborative solutions that benefit everyone. I know it is hard to conceive since the polarisation of our society has to be at an all time high, but this will need to happen if we can move forward as a society and not backwards. We need to learn from our past mistakes in order not to commit the same ones in the future and demomstrate the ability to compromise. The world is more of a grey place and not white or black.
On that note, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and may 2025 be filled with health and happiness.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Despite these uncertain times, keep on smiling: its free and will not cost you a thing 😊
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