[Comment] Offline: Meditations of melancholy

00:00 - 14 Feb 2026

So here we are. An email last week: “tensions are very high...one has little control over the chaos of the moment. I'm so angry, and so sad. It's exhausting”. These feelings, I suspect, are pervasive. A fractured world order, with the dismantling of systems that have shaped and stabilised societies, has provoked a surge of uncertainty. People are apprehensive, uneasy, fearful, troubled, disturbed, tense, even distraught. One can understand why. A cruel war of attrition in Ukraine. A terrifying humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan.