Happy New Year from the Cosmopolitan Globalists

We look back on 2020, and take a stab at predicting what the future holds ...

By Claire Berlinski

Paris

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Happy New Year!

Reader: Isn’t it a bit late for that, Claire? It’s already January 2.

Claire: You try organizing 68 people in every time zone of the world. On Slack.

Reader: Lame excuse. It’s not like you had no warning. New Year’s day was a highly predictable event.

Claire: Yeah, you’re right. I screwed up. I waited until New Year’s Eve to ask everyone. That was dumb. I won’t do it again. In fact, I’ll get started on our 2022 New Year’s day edition today—

—if you subscribe: That’s the only way there can be a 2022 edition. But we do want to have one, so badly. We’re planning to do so many exciting things in 2021—things that really need to be done—if we can persuade you to pay for them.

For one, we want to keep the newsletter, of course (and keep sending it for free to everyone who wants to read it) but we’re also going to have our own website. With such interesting stuff on it. We’ve even bought the domain name already: The Cosmopolitan Globalists are the proud owners of cosmopolitanglobalist.com, cosmopolitanglobalist.org, and cosmopolitanglobalist.net.

All the newsletters will be there, archived and searchable. But we’ll have more. In fact, some of our ideas for the website are so good that I can’t even share them with you because we fear someone will steal them.

I’ll share a few, though.

The Cosmopolitan Pugilist

We’ll have a regular section called “Point-Counterpoint: The Cosmopolitan Pugilist.” At the Cosmopolitan Globalist, we don’t argue with straw men. We’ll publish the best-informed and most persuasive letters of indignation we receive in response to our articles. We’ll give a forum to any writer we find interesting, on the right or the left. We have only two ideological purity tests: To write for us, you must believe in Äufklarung and you must accept that Caesar non est supra grammaticos.

Was ist Äufklarung, you ask? Here is the answer in the original, and here it is in English.

AUFKLÄRUNG ist der Ausgang des Menschen aus seiner selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit. Unmündigkeit ist das Unvermögen, sich seines Verstandes ohne Leitung eines anderen zu bedienen. Selbstverschuldet ist diese Unmündigkeit, wenn die Ursache derselben nicht am Mangel des Verstandes, sondern der Entschließung und des Mutes liegt, sich seiner ohne Leitung eines andern zu bedienen. Sapere aude! Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! ist also der Wahlspruch der Aufklärung.

Indeed, we’ll seek the views of people with whom we don’t agree. To that end, I’ve already coaxed the promise of a reply to our upcoming newsletter about Brexit. This required finding the last man alive who still supports Brexit and knows how to write grammatical English prose and make a coherent argument. (I had to go searching for him on some anonymous Midlands estate.)

The Cosmopolitan Lounge

We’ll have a forum—not some dumb comments section, but a properly mediated forum—in which Cosmopolitan Globalists will be able to discuss matters of global import with other members, around the globe, and particularly literate and thoughtful comments will be up-voted. The editors of the Cosmopolitan Globalists will participate in these conversations. There will be an “edit” feature should you make a typographical error. All participants will abide by the principle: Caesar non est supra grammaticos.

The Global Doom Map

We’ll have ongoing coverage—integrated with live maps, like these—at first of the Mediterranean and the South China Sea; and, as we expand, other contested zones.

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The Secret Internet

We’ll have a section devoted to bringing you the best non-English-language journalism in the world, translated into English. Like this. Longtime readers of this newsletter—back when it was just me—know that this is one of my fondest dreams. As I explained:

Can you imagine how excited you’d have been, when you were a kid, if someone had told you that in the future, we’d live in a sensationally advanced, futuristic, high-tech society in which everyone had a sensationally advanced, futuristic, high-tech device—a set of goggles, say—that let them communicate in every human language?

You don’t even have to imagine it, actually. I know you read those books. Remember the Babel Fish? The TARDIS? It wasn’t supposed to happen until the late 22nd century, but of course you remember how Ensign Hoshi Sato used the universal translator to invent the linguacode matrix, right? And how alien interference caused the translator to malfunction and start translating the crew’s speech at random, and how Commander Saru—who spoke a hundred languages the old-fashioned way, like I do—saved the day? …

The Cosmopolitan Globalists have the magic goggles. We propose to share them with you.

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The rest must remain secret. We fear that otherwise, someone with more money will steal our good ideas.

But trust me, it will be great.

We just need you to pay for it:

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New Year’s Greetings from a few Cosmopolitan Globalists

I tried to get everyone to say a few words about what they thought of 2020 and what they expected to see in 2021. Almost everyone declined to respond—or explicitly said they’d rather not even think about 2020.

But some replied. I share their responses here:

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Jon Nighswander—In the song 1921 from the rock opera Tommy, Mrs. Walker’s lover sings happily, “I’ve got a feeling ‘21 is going to be a good year”—right before Captain Walker comes home and murders him. 

Here in Austria, most of us went into 2020 on that optimistic note. As always, Europe was dealing with crises—immigration, debt in Southern Europe, Brexit, anti-democratic political parties—but somehow seemed to be shambling toward some kind of workable solution on all fronts, and surely our capable bureaucrats could manage. 

This year—despite the truly good news that vaccines are on the way, Trump is defeated, and Brexit finally resolved—the mood seems muted. Maybe we’re all in a bit of shock at how much incompetence the pandemic has exposed in our leaders, across the political spectrum, and how much irrationality and anger has been bubbling away underneath our social consensus. The streets of Vienna are quiet, lined with closed shops, empty of Advent markets and revelers, blanketed by a gray winter sky. Nothing bolsters the spirits.

But that’s fine. My observations from working with troubled companies are, first, that management always hopes an external stimulus (capital, extraordinary demand) will fix systemic problems; and two, that never works out. The pandemic revealed many ugly truths that were easier not to face. But it created an opportunity for Europe to get to work—and not wait for outside help.

So I do have a feeling that ‘21 is going to be a good year—just a year that won’t reveal its charms immediately. Going into it with low expectations will make the plot twists that much more satisfying.

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John Oxley—2020 showed us how robust our modern world can be. A global pandemic claimed a vast, terrifying number of lives. We locked ourselves down in response, at significant economic and personal cost. Yet we were not overwhelmed. In the developed world, even at the peak of the crisis, food kept arriving, water kept running, public order held. Healthcare workers were heroic, and researchers produced a vaccine in record time.

We will weather this crisis a little longer. There will be several false dawns and setbacks until the world is vaccinated and free again. But when it is, we will carry forward from this a great lesson—human brilliance, properly funded and unleashed, can solve problems almost as quickly as they can arise. We know well the other problems our world faces. We talk about them enough. But 2021 should be the year we take concerted action to solve them.

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Simon Franco—2020 made the failings of our political and economic systems starkly obvious. But also showed humanity’s resilience. We help each other, but the undercurrents of great power politics continue to flow.

In 2021, we will see a shift in public perceptions as the global economy starts to recuperate. It will be a year of changes, opportunities, and revelations. I cannot wait to see it all start to unfold. 

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Owen Lewis—Though I think we’ll all be happy to see 2020 fade into the distance, there were some silver linings despite the unusually dark clouds. I’ve never been more thankful for family than I am right now. Despite having to keep two meters apart, having family nearby has been an incredible comfort.

For those who love space, there was a lot this year to lift the Covid-induced gloom. For the first time in history, a private space company flew humans to the International Space Station. We launched three new missions to Mars, and we tagged an asteroid (and brought back samples)! 

In 2021, I think we’ll see Covid begin to subside, and things will begin to return to normal as the vaccination rate picks up. I don’t think we’ll ever be as unprepared for a pandemic as we were this time. The research that’s been done to develop these vaccines opens the door for so many medical breakthroughs: everything from a universal flu vaccine to progress against cystic fibrosis and cancer treatments.

If we’ve learned anything, I hope it’s that scientific research and development is important—and you can speed things up a lot, without compromising safety, if you cut the red tape. 

Above all, I hope that in 2021 the world works together better than we have before. What better goal than to cure a disease?

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David Raphael Israel—Out with the old, in with the new. So they say. Yet when I was in high school, I had a wise Chinese teacher who often repeated an adage: “Study something old, you’ll learn something new!”

In America, as we shift from December to January (the month of Janus the two-faced; one face looking to the past, one to the future), we’re emerging from a political nightmare and counting down the days to the inauguration of new leadership. This alone marks a welcome ending and a long-awaited beginning.

But we have lessons to absorb from this too-close encounter with our shadow psyche.

We saw the islands of a new season.

We were made young and watching, and our eyes

Believed a garden and reserve where swung

The fruits that from all hungers immunize.

There where we called, the startled land returned

A precipitate waking as of a child;

Our vision built on the approaching sand;

We entered channels where the coral smiled

And but the countries of occasion found:

There at sundown, lodged where the tide lingers,

Among the driftwood and the casual drowned,

Slept on the lulled questions of those rivers

—Anabasis (II), A Mask For Janus, W.S. Merwin

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Rachel Motte—If the tumultuous events of the past year had any good effect, it was to highlight the urgency of friendship—people who can sharpen each other’s minds and opinions in a winsome and welcoming manner.

The Cosmopolitan Globalist was easily the best part of my year, and I can’t wait to help share our conversations with you. The Globalists are an interesting lot, curious about every part of the world you can imagine and eager to learn and debate. We don’t just welcome disagreement, we crave it: How else can one learn where one has erred? No doubt some of our group of 68 will publish opinions with which I vehemently disagree, and I for one am delighted by this prospect. We’re friends, eager to add you to our cadre of companions—and make no mistake, we do think of our subscribers as companions.

Ideally, we’d meet you in a pub over a steaming meal, laughing and arguing and teasing and thinking harder than we’ve all thought before. Since we’re scattered all over the globe in the midst of a deadly pandemic, that won’t happen—at least not yet. But do pull up your favorite chair when you subscribe, and imagine that Cosmopolitan pub. We can’t wait for you to enjoy the intellectuals meals we’ll eat together.

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Claire Berlinski—I’ve been in in my apartment, alone, since March. I’ve had no social contact with anyone. To my surprise, I haven’t gone crazy. I haven’t been depressed. I’ve read a lot of good books. I took up painting. Vivek and I started the Cosmopolitan Globalist. I’m not sure that would have happened without the pandemic.

I can’t count myself one of the pandemic’s great heroes. But I’m more resilient than I thought I was. Not such a bad thing to learn.

I’m alive. I don’t take it for granted. I am grateful, if theologically puzzled about thanking God for it—I can’t say I approve of what He’s done to everyone who lost their lives. Mysterious ways, for sure. But if only to try to stay on His good side, I do thank Him.

Not everyone I loved made it through the year. I lost dear friends. 

As for 2021, my prediction is that the vaccine rollout will be maddeningly slow and incompetent, leading to vicious finger-pointing and perhaps the falling of a number of governments. (I’m looking at you, Macron: Get that vaccine in our arms, now, or it’s the end of the Fifth Republic.) We’ll be locked down a while more. But by this time, next year, I think the pandemic will be a bad memory—and when it is, the economy will explode with pent-up demand. We’ll celebrate with all the decadence of a Roman bacchanal. None of us will ever take for granted again the pleasure of seeing our friends in person. Or any pleasure that requires physical proximity to another member of our species. 

The best thing to come out of 2020 is the technology used to build the new vaccines: It will lead to magnificent breakthroughs in disease control. We’re at the cusp of a real revolution in medicine, as significant as the introduction of antibiotics. I believe this will be the last of the great killer pandemics. We certainly won’t be the last generation to suffer, but we’ll be the last to suffer this way.

I have no idea whether Joe Biden is capable of managing the staggering geopolitical challenges this fragile world faces. At least he isn’t absolutely insane. The Trump Presidency taught me to appreciate any president who isn’t stark-staring berserk.

Overall, I’m grateful 2020 wasn’t worse—while well aware that for so many, it was—and cautiously optimistic that 2021 might be better.

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Arun Kapil—Happy New Year to you too, Claire (and to everyone of course). I admire your not getting at least momentarily depressed during this annus horribilis that is thankfully passed us.

As for your 2021 predictions, however incompetent the vaccination rollout in France, I doubt it will lead to the end of the Fifth Republic. 

Amitiés