As we close the book on 2025, I want to talk about what this year has meant—not so much as a series of events, but as an inflection point in how we see ourselves. It has become clear that so much of the West has fallen victim to cultures of victimhood. Each sought to deny or suppress the individual’s internal locus of control.
When we surrender that agency to a narrative, it’s too easy to find scapegoats and villains around every corner. 2024 had been a time of collective scrutiny, a year when we pulled back the curtain on many of humanity’s evils, revealing the contours of depraved power syndicates. I believed 2025 would be—I thought it would be—the year we seized control, not of others, but of ourselves, in a renewed sense of efficacy. But it hasn’t happened.
Not yet, anyway.
The path of least resistance constantly tempts us. It’s too easy to chase comfort, whether one more bite, one more video, or one more degree of recirculated air. It’s too easy to blame the partisans, the corporations, the healthcare system, the education system, racism, sexism, or MAGA.
It’s too easy to withdraw into the digital world and become a society of human house cats—lazy, weak, and quick to yowl demands of others. It’s too easy to forget what virtues are, much less how to practice them. And when we forget to practice the virtues, we treat politics as morality.
It’s not.
It’s too easy to outsource core responsibilities to functionaries, middlemen, or people making promises they can never keep. And in our inevitable disappointment, we whine, but fail to act. 2026 must be a year of action. Throughout 2025, most thought some politician, celebrity, billionaire, or influencer would deliver salvation. But that’s just waiting on the powerful.
And those who seek power will always be among us. We must therefore learn how to become counterpower. But first, we have to engage the process better, to assess, deliberate, and act. This is central to our spiritual annealing.
And here’s what I’ve witnessed throughout 2025. When we engage this process, we naturally find one another. We organize ourselves. This becomes our means to an exodus. And as we moved through this year, a lesson emerged. Time is our master, and we must be its humble servants.
Everything we do echoes into the future for those we leave behind. If our civilization is to enjoy a renaissance, we must look to the past and its accumulated wisdom to learn from those who failed and succeeded before us. And we must use that wisdom to be discerning in the now. We must create the future through a more highly developed internal locus of control and form networks.
That’s where our power lies. Standing here at the threshold of 2026, we face the same choice we’ve always faced. We can see ourselves as cut adrift on oarless boats, helpless and at the mercy of currents we didn’t choose. Or we can look inward and see our fates as red-hot steel waiting to be pounded into shape.
