Sometimes it feels as if we are living inside a giant hourglass, where time doesn’t just flow, but buries us overhead. We used to think that progress was a straight line stretching toward a bright horizon, but the reality of 2026 more closely resembles a labyrinth whose walls are constantly in motion. What seemed like the unshakable foundation of a global world only yesterday is crumbling into fine dust today, exposing the rigid skeleton of a new reality.

Today

We have officially crossed the threshold into the “Era of Competition.” This isn’t just another crisis that can be waited out with bated breath. Analysts call it a “polycrisis”—a state where economic shocks, military conflicts, and technological races merge into one continuous hum. The optimism of the beginning of the century, the faith in open borders and a common market, has been replaced by the cold realism of fragmentation.

Look at how the world map is changing. The return of hard protectionist policies in the US isn’t just a change of names in the White House; it’s a tectonic shift. When tariff rates soar to historical highs and state sovereignty becomes a bargaining chip in operations like “Absolute Resolve,” we realize: the old rules no longer protect us. The world has become harsher, and the voice of power louder.

This is felt especially acutely here in Europe. We see how the “Old World” is trying to find its footing in a world where old approaches have stopped working. The war and energy collapse in Ukraine is not just the inhuman horror of death and falling generation figures in reports; it is living testimony to how fragile our civilization is in the face of madmen—one instance among many. Against this backdrop, the internal political swings—the victories of right-wing forces, social tension—look like attempts by people to find simple answers in a frighteningly complex world.

Tomorrow

When we try to peer over the horizon of the next decade, the future ceases to be a monolith. It shatters into several probable paths, each requiring from us its own level of strength and readiness. If we imagine history as an architectural project, by 2035 we may find ourselves in one of three completely different “buildings.”

Scenario One: Pax Sinica or the “Digital Silk Road”

This is a world where the center of gravity finally shifts to the East. Dominance is determined not by the number of aircraft carriers, but by superiority in artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Western institutions continue to stagnate, sinking into internal strife, while the technological sovereignty of China and its allies creates a new global hierarchy. It is a world of rigid order, algorithmic management, and new standards of living, where stability is purchased at the price of total transparency.

Scenario Two: Climate Rupture

The darkest option, where ecological changes stop being a topic for conferences and become a daily nightmare. Soil degradation and water shortages trigger waves of migration on a scale that dwarfs the crises of the past. The world turns into a patchwork quilt of zones of relative prosperity, surrounded by high walls, and spaces of “eternal storm,” where the struggle for basic resources becomes the only meaning of existence. Old alliances finally collapse, giving way to brutal regional egoism.

Scenario Three: Muddle Through—The Art of Forcing Through Chaos

The most likely and, perhaps, the most understandable path for us. A scenario of “chronic turbulence,” where no single power can establish a final order, but no global collapse occurs either. We continue to adapt to local conflicts, get used to a “jagged” economy, and learn to create in the intervals between crises. This is a world of inertia, where humanity survives through incredible plasticity and the ability to find footing even on shifting sands.

By 2035, we have three probable paths, but which one is coming? Whether the world will become a technological monopoly of the East, plunge into the chaos of climate wars, or continue to painfully force its way through endless local storms—we do not know.

How to Be

Pandemics, wars, and economic uncertainty have given rise to the phenomenon of “loss of the future”—a state in which people cannot plan their lives, feeling trapped in an endless, anxious present.

How do you not lose yourself when the ground is slipping from under your feet? Resilience today is not the absence of fear, but the ability to build your life on a foundation that does not depend on stock prices or geopolitical briefings.

There are three points of support on which you can build a humble but functional stool for yourself:

• Dichotomy of Control: Learn to draw a line between what you can influence and what is beyond your reach. My family, my children, my work—this is what I create every day, despite the noise outside.
• Antifragility: In a world that is breaking, one must know how to be flexible. Chaos is not just a threat, but a teacher that forces us to discard the superfluous and value true closeness and real skills.
• Tragic Optimism: Finding meaning within suffering. This is the understanding that even if the world around seems absurd, humanity and honesty with oneself remain the highest values.

We live in an era of “digital noise,” where every headline seeks to knock us off balance. Sometimes, when I feel that “carrying on” is getting a bit too difficult, a strict information diet helps. The rule of “30 minutes for news per day” and refusing to endlessly scroll the feed returns control over one’s own attention.

Ultimately, the scale of what is happening can be shocking, but history has always been a story of survival and adaptation. We are not just witnesses to this fragmentation; we are those who must preserve warmth and common sense at its epicenter.

If we look back, we will see that humanity has found itself at this point of absolute shadow more than once. Remember the peak of the Cold War, when the world froze in anticipation of a nuclear dawn. Then, in the 60s or early 80s, anxiety was not just background noise—it was tangible, like lead. People built bunkers, children in schools learned to hide under desks, and newspaper headlines daily counted down the minutes on the “Doomsday Clock.” It seemed that the future simply did not exist, that history was about to slam shut.

However, life proved stronger than fear. Those generations didn’t just “wait out” the end of the tension—they continued to build houses, raise children, and create, even when the sky seemed a harbinger of catastrophe. They endured, preserving the faith that darkness is only a temporary absence of light. And if they were able to pass through that paralyzing horror and wait for their “tomorrow,” then we too have every chance of surviving the current storm, no matter how frightening its architecture may seem.

January 2026.