The Dirty Dozen: Predictions for 2026

But we are sleepwalking. Societies do not hover at moral equilibrium like a physics experiment left undisturbed. They drift, they decay, or they are corrected—never neutral, never static . . .

We will continue to sleepwalk. Societies do not hover at moral equilibrium like a physics experiment left undisturbed. They drift, they decay, or they are corrected—never neutral, never static. What we call “stability” usually just means momentum carrying us downhill, with our eyes politely closed.

Social and moral trends do not pause for reflection. They do not wait for committees, task forces, or the issuance of another well-meaning communiqué. They slide. They erode. They diminish. And when they collapse, we are always surprised—despite having ignored every warning sign on the way down.

As Alexis de Tocqueville observed with unnerving precision:

“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”

When citizens cease to think, speak, and judge for themselves—when they outsource moral reasoning to institutions, slogans, and fashionable indignations—the decline is already well advanced. What follows is not a catastrophe by coup, …