Opinion PB Mehta writes: Five vibes — in politics, economics and creativity — that will shape 2025

The Age of Conspiracy: Years have often been associated with different markers: Planetary positions, astrological omens, different animals. But, perhaps increasingly, our world, as befits our times, will not be measured by cosmic markers. Instead, it will be characterised by the word of our era, a vibe. If one had to choose a vibe for 2025 in much of the world, especially its two democracies, India and the US, it would be conspiratorial.

Conspiracy theories have always shadowed political arguments, especially in democracies. It is hard to know whether thebelief in conspiracy theories is rising. Such theories seem more plausible when familiar frameworks are corroding. But two moods will dominate. On one or another issue, at least half their populations will feel the world is one small step away from ruin. The second is that this ruin will be the product of small shadowy forces — non-existent deep states, small cabals, ethnic groups, malevolent demons lurking around the corner.

The combination of these two often leads to a demand for scapegoating particular groups, targeting fictitious sources of power, unearthing secret motives behind even the most ordinary of political actions. It will make political discourse even more fragile, accusatory and existentially high stakes.

The Age of Communalism: In India, communalism has shadowed democracy and nationalism. For almost two decades since the 1990s, communal violence has been on the decline. But this trend is reversing. This is not a conspiracy in the recesses of a deep state. It is a growing sociological reality hidden in plain sight. It has also become the default ideological consciousness of the most powerful sections of society.

The fault lines being thrown open, the communal wounds being scratched, the widespread legitimisation of a politics of hate will be harder to contain. But it is slowly simmering. There is a late 1930s or early 1940s feel to our political consciousness — a communal settlement coming apart. Trends in our neighbourhood and the global legitimisation of right-wing politics may give even more cover for communalism at home. The lack of large-scale overt violence till now should not disguise the deep sense of foreboding building up.

The Crisis of Social Self Knowledge: One of the reasons we keep using words like “uncertainty” and “interregnum” is that we are in a phase where we know much less about social and economic systems than we pretend to. Of course, many common sense truths about societies and economies still hold. But one of the remarkable things about the world since the financial crisis of 2008, the scars of the Covid pandemic, and now the wars in Ukraine and Israel, is that we have discovered so many things about how the world works after the fact, as it were.

Economies across the world have turned out to be resilient in places we least expected and most vulnerable where we did not. Assumptions about what causes inflation and what degree of pressures economies can handle have been blinkering policymakers.

Then there is the gap between what the data supposedly tells us and how economies are represented in the imaginations of people. In short, our confidence about whether we can adequately represent our societies to ourselves as objects of knowledge is deeply suspect. This is perhaps reflected in the crisis of the social sciences but also in forms of authoritative knowledge that claim to represent social workings. In some ways, this can be liberating. It is a vibe consistent with a post-technocratic world, where the orientation is going to be “let us do it” — we will learn whether it works after the fact. We should be more prepared to say, “We don’t have a clue.”

Price Discovery in International Relations: Everyone expects Donald Trump to disrupt the international order — though, to be fair, the United States has been doing it for quite a while. The Joe Biden administration was not a radical departure from the first Trump administration. But every power, in its own way, is trying to be a revisionist power: Russia, China, even middle powers like Turkey. The question each one is asking is not what rules of the international system we want to uphold or even what is our long-term national interest. The question is more “What can we get away with?” And again, the answer to this question is often available only after the fact. So, there will be a lot of pushing at the boundaries, and the probability of more wars is very high.

The Trump administration will begin exuberantly, and there may even be initial euphoria over the possibility of bringing peace to Ukraine and stabilisation of China-US relations. But ultimately, the deep trust deficits amongst the great powers will not be overcome, none of the major global public goods problems — for example, climate change, public health and the stability of financial systems — will be addressed.

The Age of Creativity: On the other hand, the extraordinary mobilisation of talent in the world means that technological and cultural creativity will continue apace. The financial euphoria over AI will settle down, and developments will be received more calmly, avoiding both euphoria and doom. Technological and artistic creativity will continue to enchant. Bollywood will not make a comeback. Taylor Swift’s popularity will have peaked. The music that replaces it will, alas, be much darker.

The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express