The year is coming to an end, and this will likely be my last blog of the year unless something emerges from the quiet of holidays or the looseness of travel. I end the year with a small but genuine sense of satisfaction. For the first time in a long while, I wrote regularly and with discipline. Not everything landed the way I wanted it to, and not every piece found its audience, but the habit itself mattered. Writing became less about reaction and more about attention.

There are a handful of issues that refuse to stay confined to news cycles and opinion columns. They linger. Immigration, socioeconomic inequality, the revival of civilisational anxieties, and the persistence of the so-called “great replacement” narrative all seem to hover in the background of everyday life. These ideas do not always announce themselves loudly. Often they surface quietly, through casual remarks, selective outrage, or algorithmically nudged content that pretends to be neutral while pushing a particular emotional register. Fear, grievance, and resentment travel faster than context.

Beneath these cultural and political currents sits a familiar economic logic. The incentives to keep wages suppressed while wealth continues to concentrate at the top are not new, and they are not going away. Nor is the long-running effort to weaken collective structures such as unions and social protections that once offered some balance between labour and capital. What is different now is the speed and subtlety with which consent is manufactured. The story is rarely framed as economics alone. It is wrapped instead in language about culture, identity, efficiency, or national survival.

In this environment, staying grounded requires more than staying informed. It demands a certain discipline of mind. Awareness has to be active rather than passive, rooted in discernment and critical inquiry rather than constant consumption. Algorithms reward outrage and certainty, not reflection. They thrive on symbolic control, shaping what feels urgent, what feels normal, and what feels unsayable. Resisting that pull does not mean withdrawing from public life, but engaging with it more slowly and more deliberately.

So, I end the year where I have increasingly tried to stand throughout it. Paying attention. Asking what sits beneath the surface of the stories we are told. Refusing easy binaries. Holding space for complexity even when it is uncomfortable. If there is a thread running through this year’s writing, it is that staying human in an automated, accelerated world requires effort. Till next time.