John Robson: Let’s Stick to Sound Principles to Navigate the Unexpected in 2025

The 2025 New Year's Eve numerals are displayed in Times Square in New York on Dec. 18, 2024. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

Commentary

Well, here we are, a year older and not an hour richer. But enough about the impact of government economic policy. As we look forward to 2025 with clenched and chattering teeth, what can we expect? This year, the unexpected. As usual. So brace yourselves.

Predictions are good for a laugh. For instance, the pundit who told me Chrystia Freeland had outfoxed Justin Trudeau just as her “resignation” letter after being fired landed. Or the “Globe Advisor Weekly” telling me “Trump isn’t making it easy for investment forecasters.” When was it ever? Nineteen twenty-eight?

What I like even better is pundits telling me exactly why the Assad regime in Syria crumbled overnight after utterly failing to predict it. But I don’t want to be too unfair here. There’s a classic story of Harvard professor Adam Ulam, a fine Soviet scholar, being asked why he hadn’t foreseen the ouster of Khrushchev and replying that Khrushchev hadn’t either.

Nor do I advise blundering into the future with insouciant nihilism, declaring that nobody can tell what’s going to happen and we won’t understand it once it does. The situation is grim. But it’s not that grim.

If you can look back on 2024 and say “I told you so” on Israel finally losing patience both with Islamic terrorism and the fake support it gets from Western governments, striking at Hamas and Hezbollah and having both collapse feebly and Assad with them, you can correct me here. As I’ll also say next year to the writer on Substack who predicted: “The USA is about to discover the joy of grilled hispi, also known as pointed cabbage” if, a year from now, one in 10,000 Americans can pronounce “hispi” let alone identify it in a grocery aisle.

I still won’t applaud predictions that boldly assert that time may tell, such as the Globe and Mail’s Dec. 3 “‘Massive breakout’ could be imminent for Canadian bank stocks, say Scotiabank strategists.” Yeah. Unless it’s not. And I have even less use for fake ones like Blacklock’s Reporter reports, “There will be no recession in 2025, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday.”

It sounds absurd but firm, right? Except the story immediately continued, “The Governor added Canadians can ‘decide what adjective they want’ to describe rising unemployment, weaker growth and declining business investment.”

Recession isn’t even an adjective, it’s a noun. So I do predict more official bloviation in service of morale-boosting plausible deniability. For the rest of us, the right way to face the future politically and geopolitically is the same one to use personally.

On New Year’s, you don’t say stuff like, “I will be promoted to VP, human resources from my current assistant deputy chief IT officer position on July 3 after the incumbent is caught embezzling.” Or “On Sept. 14 I will bump someone’s cart in produce at the Main Street supermarket, apologize, offer to buy them coffee, and marry them three months later.”

Nor stuff like “I will get drunk every night, sleep in, and arrive late and dishevelled because I’m never getting promoted,” or “I will gain 30 pounds because no one will ever kiss me again.” At least I hope not.

You say, “This year I will work out thrice weekly,” or “I will spend less time on social media and more with a thesaurus,” or “I will bathe less infrequently.” Not specific time-and-place goals, but sound principles.

Ditto public affairs. To its credit, The Economist, after a snide “[i]n a result that everyone saw coming, France’s government has been sacked by parliament,” did offer “Ten implausible-sounding scenarios for 2025” because “To navigate the future, it can help to anticipate the unlikely.”

True. But not so we’ll have each one gamed out if it should happen. Rather, as we can’t read tea leaves, imagining improvising to meet this or that unwelcome contingency helps us realize what would generally be conducive to survival.

It’s no good saying, “This year I will realize she was fired,” or “Hey Israelis, guard the southern border on Oct. 7, 2023.” But we can resolve to pay attention to what happened, not what a politician said happened, and get “Si vis pacem, para bellum” engraved on a rock we keep handy.

Likewise, “There is no free lunch” and “Ideas have consequences.” Those three alone will do more than a heaping helping of hispi to get us to December 2025.

P.S. Substack also said, “Imagine matcha affogatos, chai tea tiramisu, matcha martinis, and black tea pumpkin pie.” OK. Because I have imagined them I will decline them if offered. Thanks.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.