Something feels profoundly unstable about the world we're living in

Wars, geopolitical tensions, democratic backsliding, climate disruption, growing inequalities, a relentless cost-of-living crisis and the extraordinary acceleration of artificial intelligence are colliding.

These aren’t isolated crises that societies can recover from one after another. They’re unfolding simultaneously, amplifying each other and tearing at the foundations of our collective security.

But something else is happening, and I find it equally remarkable.

Look at the streets of Paris, New Delhi, American cities, or the protests emerging across Africa, Asia and Latin America—regions we casually bundle together under the absurdly broad term Global South, as though much of humanity could be described as a single geopolitical entity.

The circumstances are different, sometimes radically so. In India, young people have mobilized against corruption, unemployment and failures in education. Across Europe, students and workers are challenging austerity, deteriorating public services and unaffordable housing. In the United States, movements are confronting authoritarianism, immigration repression and growing economic insecurity. From Nepal to Morocco and Madagascar, younger generations have challenged political elites, inequality and failing institutions.

Different countries, different realities, but increasingly recognizable struggles.

And here’s what strikes me most: these are not entirely new struggles.

Previous generations fought for social rights, decent wages, democratic accountability, public education, peace and a livable planet. They won important victories, but many of the underlying problems were never resolved. Some of those victories are now being dismantled.

A new generation is inheriting the unfinished struggles of previous generations, while confronting crises those generations could barely have imagined.

And unlike before, this generation can watch the world struggle in real time.

Through social media, images of repression in one country reach protesters thousands of kilometres away. Organizing strategies cross borders. Climate activists encounter movements for Palestinian rights. Housing protests intersect with demands for economic justice. Concerns about AI, employment and technological power become part of a wider debate about who controls our future.

Social media can manipulate, divide and distort these conversations too. But it has also made possible something historically extraordinary: a shared perception of global injustice, emerging across societies that experience it in profoundly different ways.

Not necessarily a unified movement. Not a single ideology. But a growing recognition that these crises are interconnected—and that ordinary people are repeatedly being asked to bear their consequences.

I think about all this from my own position of relative privilege.

I have a job, a roof over my head, running water, electricity and food in my fridge. I enjoy a degree of stability that millions of people simply don’t have.

Yet even from this relatively protected position, the accumulation of crises, uncertainty and rising living costs can feel overwhelming.

If the world already feels suffocating from a position of relative privilege, imagine what it means for those who have no safety net at all.

For millions, these aren’t abstract geopolitical developments or debates about technological disruption. They determine whether there’s food on the table, whether rent gets paid, whether a child can attend school, whether a family can survive displacement or war.

And at the very moment societies desperately need stronger public services, social protections and solidarity, too many governments are weakening precisely those institutions.

The crises are global, but their consequences are profoundly unequal. Who bears their costs is not simply a matter of circumstance. It is also a matter of political choice.

Perhaps this is the common thread running through so many contemporary movements: a generation increasingly unwilling to accept that inequality, insecurity and sacrifice are inevitable, while wealth and political power remain concentrated in fewer hands.

The challenge now is whether this emerging shared consciousness can become lasting solidarity, collective organization and meaningful political change.

Because the real question isn’t why so many people, across so many countries, are anxious, exhausted or angry.

It’s why we keep expecting them to endure a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to live in—and why the people with the power to change it seem so determined to preserve the systems that brought us here.