Locally Fine, Globally Toast
This Week in "What the Actual Hell"
Well. Umm… this week has been a busy one.
Not just the usual "work is busy", that's my baseline. That's like saying the sun is hot or that Facebook is evil. No, I mean busy in the political-socio-economic-global-flustercuck sense. Busy in the sense of, "am I supposed to just keep making my coffee while the foundations of the world order creak like a 400-year-old rocking chair?"
Let's take a quick roll call of disasters, shall we?
Nepal bans social media. Result: 30 people killed, 1,033 injured. Because apparently, when you tell people "no memes for you," things get bloody. (To be completely fair, it is way more complicated than this joke, honestly, that headline alone deserves its own article, but I'm trying not to be a political commentator today. Keyword: trying.)
Russia casually lobs drones into Poland. NATO Article 4 discussions light up. Just some Tuesday night nuclear brinkmanship, no big deal.
"Vibe hacking" is now a thing. This is very new. Don't ask me what it means. Sounds like a rejected Black Mirror script. But apparently, it's real and I should be worried. Will probably research and write something about it later.
NPM breach. Yes, the registry that holds together the duct-tape-and-chewing-gum internet had a supply chain attack. Meaning your doorbell, your Tesla, and your fridge might now be trying to steal your crypto wallet (or was, it has been patched, but seriously…)
Political assassination in America. Right there, live, in glorious 4K from twelve different angles because everyone is now a war correspondent with an iPhone.
Plus many, many more atrocities against mankind
And that was just this week. Like, can someone tell me how I'm supposed to finish a to-do list when the background radiation of existence is this loud?
The Doomscroll Olympics
It honestly feels like the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And not even a nice woven wicker one, more like a falling-apart Kmart plastic basket with someone else's chewing gum stuck to the bottom.
I'm 25. I know this isn't new. Humans have been burning their own houses down since Mesopotamia. But it feels like it's… more. Louder. Closer. That's the problem.
Back in the 1800s, your bad news came slow. Telegrams, newspapers, stories by firelight. "Oh, did you hear about that famine three months ago? Tragic." Global instability was a bedtime story. You still had your turnips to dig up.
Now? We live in a fun little world where atrocity beams itself directly into your pocket. You can't sleep, you can't scroll, you can't even doom-binge TikTok without seeing a jugular explode. My morning bingo card did not include "watch blood spray out of someone's neck like a busted garden hose." Yet there it was, autoplaying on my feed before my second sip of coffee.
It used to be war photographers who documented horror. You know, professionals with Leica cameras and death wishes. Now it's just "some guy with an iPhone on the ground." Zero filter, zero context, zero delay. Welcome to trauma, live-streamed.
And these little hell machines, our phones, are relentless. They beam us stuff that would've given WWII veterans PTSD. And unlike our parents, who got their tragedy once removed, narrated by George Negus, we get the raw feed. Gen Z grew up marinated in pain. The saddest generation, not because we're fragile, but because we've had front-row seats to everything breaking all the time.
Therapy by Keyboard
Honestly? Writing this is therapeutic. Somewhere between journaling and prayer, vomiting words onto a page makes me feel less insane. Otherwise, it's just me screaming into the void of my Notes app.
So what's the point of this particular scream-piece? Stability. Let's talk about stability, our old frenemy.
The Illusion of Stability
Locally? Pretty solid. I mean, yes, I know for some people even local life isn't stable. But generally speaking: we've got jobs, mates, Uber Eats, endless consumer crap. We don't usually worry about our next meal. Compared to 2,000 years ago, we're living like gods. The ancients were wondering if they'd survive winter. We're wondering if DoorDash will forget the extra aioli.
Globally? We are a drunk Jenga tower wobbling on a card table. Wars, autocrats, misinformation, tech spiralling out of control, polarisation, and economies hanging by duct tape. The whole system creaks like a haunted house, but locally we just keep ordering lattes.
And the real kicker? Global instability has a funny way of seeping down into local life. Slowly. Quietly. Insurance premiums spike, supply chains choke, politics swing like a wrecking ball.
Exhibit A: The Numbers That Ruin Your Day
Conflicts: UCDP/PRIO clocked 61 active state conflicts in 2024. That's the highest ever recorded. Military spending? $2.7 trillion. The biggest annual increase since the Cold War. (Thank you, Reuters)
Democracy: Backsliding like it's on a Slip 'N Slide. Global democratic outlook is the worst it's been in 25 years. (Thank you, V-Dem)
Trust: Edelman's 2025 report basically says, "no one believes anyone." Polarisation's up, trust is down, and employers aren't even safe havens anymore.
Misinformation: Deepfakes everywhere. Real video dismissed as fake, fake video hailed as real. Truth is officially an optional side quest. Liar’s Dividend. (Thanks, Reuters)
Economy: IMF says growth is ~3%, which is economist code for "fine unless literally anything happens." Spoiler: things are happening.
Exhibit B: Tech Is an Accelerant
Oh yes. Let's not forget our favorite destabilizer: tech.
Misinformation & AI narrative attacks: The World Economic Forum says this is the top risk. Trust shredded, cohesion gone, governance crippled.
Cybercrime at scale: AI makes phishing cheap, convincing, and multilingual. Europol warns about "autonomous criminal networks." Fantastic. Can't wait for my fridge to scam me.
Autonomous weapons: Because giving AI the power to pull triggers has never gone wrong in a simulation.
Superintelligent AI risk: Experts say 10–20% chance AI wipes us out. Better odds than me ever buying a house.
Governance gap: Some countries scream "regulate!" Others hoard GPUs. No one agrees. Meanwhile, the AI arms race barrels forward like a toddler with scissors.
So yes, tech is both the fire and the gasoline.
And Yet, History Laughs
See, none of this is new. Humans have been flipping the stability table like a drunk uncle at Christmas since forever. This isn't the first time the global vs. local balance has gone completely upside down. The only difference now is we get push notifications about it instead of waiting for the village drunk to shout the news in the market square.
Rome, The Pax Romana (27 BCE – 180 CE)
Ah, the "good old days" of global stability. Rome controlled trade routes, minted coins, kept pirates off the Mediterranean, and invented straight roads (thanks, lads). On paper, the empire was rock-solid.
Locally? If your farm's turnip harvest failed, congrats, you're dead. Famine, plague, random barbarian raids. The empire may have spanned continents, but Gaius the farmer was still one bad crop away from starvation. Global order steady, local misery rampant.
Middle Ages (9th–11th century)
After Charlemagne, you had trade routes buzzing, Islamic scholars translating Aristotle, Byzantium and Baghdad doing the heavy intellectual lifting. A sort of proto-globalisation.
Locally? Enjoy serfdom. You're tied to the land, taxed into oblivion, and occasionally get your house burned down by Vikings. The "world system" looked fine, but for you, Hans the peasant, life was a cocktail of dysentery and raiding parties.
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648)
Europe descends into religious chaos, then decides: "Never again." Cue the Treaty of Westphalia, the birth of sovereign nation-states, and one of the first attempts at a stable global order.
Locally? Germany was basically a real-life Hunger Games. Entire regions lost 20–40% of their populations. Plague, famine, and mercenaries treating villages like free buffets. Global treaties drew new borders. Local farmers buried their children.
Cold War (1945–1991)
Globally, the "balance of terror" held. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) meant no one pushed the big red button. Institutions like the UN and IMF kept the financial plumbing flowing. "Stability," they called it.
Locally? Proxy wars torched Vietnam, Afghanistan, Central America, Africa. Millions displaced, millions dead. For people in hotspots, "peace" looked a lot like napalm.
Post-WWII Western Boom (1950s–70s)
Globally, the US dollar ruled, Bretton Woods stabilised economies, NATO kept the West feeling cozy. Cue suburban bliss, Coca-Cola, and the Space Race.
Locally (outside the West)? Coups every other Tuesday, famines amplified by colonial wreckage, insurgencies, dictators propped up by superpowers. "Global stability" meant life sucked for you, just not for the guys in suits writing the IMF reports.
So yeah, history's been playing this little irony game forever.
Then: Global order looked steady, but the villager feared famine, plague, and raids.
Now: Local life is cushy, Uber Eats, Netflix, police that mostly work, but the global order is crumbling like damp plaster.
We live in a world where I can get bubble tea delivered in 20 minutes but might also wake up to WWIII trending on Twitter. Truly, the duality of man.
So What Do We Do With This?
You wanted a moral? Fine, here's a buffet of coping strategies (pick whichever flavour of despair-optimism you like):
The Stoic Angle: Control the controllables. Strengthen your local circle. You can't fix NATO, but you can check on your neighbour and stock some canned beans. Marcus Aurelius would approve.
The Civic Angle: Stop pretending "someone else" is steering the ship. Spoiler: no one's steering. Trust doesn't repair itself; it has to be rebuilt brick by brick, by people who haven't given in to apathy.
The Tech Angle: Don't shrug at weaponised AI like it's just another Tuesday. Hold people accountable, demand governance. Pretending it's fine is how we end up with a fridge that scams your grandma.
The Resilience Angle: Stability isn't permanent; it's a lease. Resilience is the rent. Pay up, adapt, and prepare for the cracks.
The Optimist's Angle: Chaos sometimes births innovation. The Black Death sparked the Renaissance. WWII upheaval birthed the UN and modern rights frameworks. Maybe today's doomscroll sparks… something less garbage.
God-Laughed-at-Our-Plans™
So no, this isn't me saying "give up, we're doomed." (Okay, maybe 20% doomed, but the other 80% is stubborn survival instinct, caffeine, and the faint whisper of divine comedy.)
Because here's the thing: the world order? It's wobbling like a Jenga tower built by toddlers on a trampoline. But local life? That's still real. That's still tangible. Your family still matters. Your neighbours, your friendships, your random acts of kindness, those don't evaporate just because NATO's having an identity crisis or AI is plotting our extinction in the background.
It's easy to feel like, "Well, if WWIII is trending and AI is busy plotting our extinction, why bother?" But that's just doom-brain talking. You can't fix NATO. You can't stop Russia from lobbing drones or your fridge from joining a crypto-mining botnet. But you can walk your dog, check on your people, pray, cook dinner, and build something meaningful even if the backdrop looks like Mad Max.
And maybe that's the uncomfortable truth: we're not promised global stability. Never were. "The flesh is weak, the spirit is willing", that's Scripture, and honestly, it feels like the most accurate summary of human civilisation ever written. We keep trying, even while everything around us burns. And God? He lets us. Because apparently free will also means free to faceplant into chaos every 50 years or so.
I'll be blunt: I do sometimes want to chuck my phone in the ocean, buy a goat, and disappear into the wilderness like some sarcastic John the Baptist. Just eat locusts, scream at the sky, and wait for the second coming. But I know myself, I'd probably cave in a week, build Wi-Fi out of coconuts, and end up doomscrolling again. This is the paradox: I hate the system, but I can't escape it. None of us can. So instead, we wrestle with it, reshape it, try to carve out small bubbles of sanity in the chaos.
And yet, here's the thing I can't shake: instability is where God usually does His best work. You look at history, plagues, wars, collapses, and the pattern isn't "welp, that's it folks." The pattern is rebirth. Renewal. Something cracks, something dies, and something new emerges. The Black Death → Renaissance. WWII → United Nations. TikTok doomscrolling → ??? (insert plot twist here).
It's almost like He uses instability as a reset button. Like, He's up there saying, "Yeah, you guys thought you built Rome 2.0, but surprise, you still suck at humility. Try again." That's the paradox: we see collapse. He sees compost. Out of the rot, something grows.
So yes, the cracks are real. The instability is everywhere. And it's terrifying. But cracks also let the light in (Leonard Cohen nailed that one, I'll allow it). Faith doesn't make the instability vanish, it just gives you the audacity to believe that what comes next might be worth enduring this part.
At the end of the day, we've got two options:
Let instability crush us into bitter husks, screaming at clouds.
Or choose to be the people who carry faith, resilience, community, stubborn optimism, and enough sarcasm to fill the Mariana Trench.
Because if the next Renaissance really is born out of TikTok doomscrolling, then fine. Let it. Stranger things have happened. I mean, we're already living in a world where my fridge is trying to sell me extended warranty insurance.
So scream. Pray. Meme. Adapt. Survive. That's the rent we pay for stability. And maybe, just maybe, that's the way faith works too: not as a magic shield, but as the grit to keep paying rent while God rewrites the script.