Crossroads

Making a soybean burger with home pickled red onions and some Lebanese mhamara, I can look back on three days with well-executed seminars that once again have renewed my faith in the next generation. Whatever you hear about failing standards in education, the kids today have so many qualities that are not captured by the prevailing fixation with measurable metrics. For one thing, they are equipped with a strong moral compass and a cosmopolitan sensitivity, qualities that I fear will be badly needed in the decades ahead.

Opening the leading conservative newspaper in Sweden this morning reminded me of how deep into the rabbit hole that we have fallen and how uncritically they have come to embrace everything from degrowthers to anti-feminist islamophobes. At the same time, all challenges are of course relative. In the latest issue of Monocle, there is a Colombia special which highlights the incredible strides that the country has made in the last ten years but also the persistence of corruption, inequality and narcopolitics. While our own visit to Bogotá in November will be brief, I am still very much looking forward to seeing a bit of all this with my own eyes.