How to keep our heads when the world goes crazy?
On January 3rd, the US bombed Venezuela and captured its sitting president. I've delayed writing about this, because I needed time to process my own emotions and experiences - from the immediate ones to the ones following.
Safe to say, it’s a whole mixed bag. But I want to highlight some of them.
1. First, I felt outrage. At the start, it was sharp and intense, and it has since mellowed a bit. But it is still there. Outrage is an important emotion. It tells us what we value, and what we believe is right and wrong. It helps us to find our anchors - individually and collectively. It moves us to demand for better.
2. Next, I felt fear. In fact, at times terrifying. What happens to one country can also happen to others. Fear is also an important emotion. It tells us what (or who) is unsafe or untrustworthy. It moves us to create distance between ourselves and the source of danger, and to seek strength in company.
3. Then, pragmatism came into the picture. In the law of the jungle, might is often right - much as I don’t like it. Coming from a small country, we can’t change the natural order of these things. At times, we can choose to influence things and punch above our weight, but we also need to survive and stay in the game to fight another day.
All three are important. Ignoring one or more of them is problematic. Outrage alone can burn me up. Fear alone can debilitate me. Pragmatism alone can cause me to lose my moral compass. I know I need all three, but finding a balance is hard. How do I stay outraged at injustice AND pragmatic about power realities AND not paralysed by fear? Some circles are just hard to square.
But I didn’t want to sink into despair. Despair is something I have felt a lot more since 2025. Each time, I like to believe that reason will prevail and justice will prevail. And the system will correct itself. But things seem to have gotten worse, and spreading to the global stage. At some point, all of us may be embroiled.
How do we keep our heads?
I conversed with my AI (Claude). I happened to also be watching a Netflix documentary on the Vietnam War. And something clarified for me: Throughout history, lust for control, power and dominance often leads to overreach. And overreach creates its own opposition. Napoleon. Hitler. Soviet Union in Afghanistan. US in Vietnam. Not through morality or justice - but through the basic unsustainability of trying to control what cannot be controlled.
These aren't moral laws. They're more like... gravity. Reality's feedback loops. They apply to everyone, even (especially?) the powerful who think they're exempt.
This realisation doesn't make what happened okay. But it shifts my relationship to despair. It allows me to hold all those mixed emotions and experiences in a less burdened way. It allows for a sense of equanimity and strategic patience. And it allows me to gird myself for the real possibility that things will get worse (perhaps significantly), but it will also increasingly become unsustainable (even if it takes time).
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To sum up, don’t let anyone lecture or hector us about feeling outrage or fear. Those are important emotions that serve us. But don’t be crippled by them either, or to despair and become hard and cynical. Stay pragmatic but hold fast to our values. Place (quiet) faith not in mere hope or wishful thoughts, but in reality’s invisible laws and counter-balancing forces.
We are in this together.