Angus Hervey

I'm a solutions journalist.

For over a decade, I've been reporting on stories of progress.

But in the last few months, I've started to think that maybe I was wrong.

Almost a century ago, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, thrown into prison by Mussolini, wrote, The old world is dying.

The new world struggles to be born.

Now is a time of monsters.

Those words are haunting.

It feels like he could be speaking to us today.

A great unraveling is underway.

And you know this story, because it is everywhere.

The end of the international rules-based order, power over principle, aid budgets obliterated, science under attack.

Putin, Zelensky, Trump, Gaza, hospitals, hostages.

Sudan, famine, DRC, rebels, Yemen, Venezuela, Turkey, Hungary, Taiwan.

The United States of America, the economic vandalism, the contempt for the rule of law, the casual cruelty, the measles,

All of the values that we assumed were universal, truth, decency, common sense, face not just reversal but violent backlash.

Beneath the surface, deeper, more menacing undercurrents.

The digital platforms that were supposed to connect us now do the opposite.

Algorithms breed paranoia.

manufacturing division, drowning truth in deliberate falsehoods.

Carl Sagan warned us about this, an era where people, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what is true, slide almost unnoticed back into superstition and darkness.