Author: Awareness News

Buddhist Economics and Modern Capitalism 

Posted on by Leave a comment

Modern economies are built around growth. Countries want higher GDP, companies want higher profits, and consumers are encouraged to buy more. This model has achieved a great deal. It has supported technological progress, expanded global trade, and helped lift millions of people out of extreme poverty. 

However, it has also created serious problems. Climate change, overconsumption, burnout, and inequality show that growth can come with major costs. This raises the question: should economic growth always be treated as the main goal? 

Buddhist economics offers a different way of thinking. It does not reject capitalism, markets, or development. Instead, it asks what the economy is supposed to serve. From this perspective, economic activity should support human well-being, meaningful work, community, and environmental balance, not growth for its own sake. 

Figure 1: Relationship between GDP per capita and self-reported life satisfaction, 2024. 

The Achievements and Problems of Modern Capitalism 

Any serious discussion of Buddhist economics must recognize what capitalism has achieved. Market competition has helped drive innovation, technology, and global trade. Economic growth has also helped reduce poverty. Since the 1990s, extreme poverty has fallen sharply, partly because of market-based growth and international trade. 

Still, capitalism can damage the well-being it claims to improve. Consumer culture has created a constant desire to buy more. Advertising, social media, and changing trends encourage people to replace products long before they need to, creating waste in areas such as fashion and electronics. 

The workplace shows a similar problem. Many economies are more productive than ever, yet many workers experience stress, exhaustion, and burnout. A society can produce more while still leaving people overworked and dissatisfied. This is one of the contradictions Buddhist economics tries to address. 

As E. F. Schumacher wrote in Small Is Beautiful: “The economy should serve people. People should not serve the economy.” 

Schumacher and Buddhist Economics 

The modern idea of Buddhist economics is closely linked to E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful, published in 1973. Schumacher argued that conventional economics made a mistake by treating labour mainly as a cost and consumption mainly as a benefit. In reality, work can provide purpose and a way to contribute to society. At the same time, consumption does not automatically create happiness, especially once basic needs have been met. 

This connects to the Buddhist idea of “right livelihood.” In economic terms, right livelihood means that work should help people develop their abilities, support the community, and provide a dignified life. Work that harms people, communities, or the environment should not be considered successful only because it is profitable. 

Another important idea is “enoughness.” Modern economies often assume that more is always better, more income, production, consumption, and growth. Buddhist economics challenges this assumption. It suggests that after a certain point, having more may create stress, waste, and environmental damage instead of improving life quality. 

This idea is supported by happiness economics. Research associated with Richard Easterlin suggests that once people reach a certain level of income and security, extra income has a weaker effect on life satisfaction. Growth matters most when it helps people meet real needs. Beyond that point, its benefits become less clear. 

Figure 2: The Easterlin Paradox: beyond a moderate income threshold, further wealth yields diminishing gains in reported well-being. 

Where These Ideas Are Already Being Tested 

Some Buddhist economic principles are already being used, directly or indirectly, in different parts of the world. 

Japan is an interesting case because it challenges the idea that slow GDP growth always means social failure. For decades, Japan has had weaker growth than many developed economies, yet it still performs well in life expectancy, safety, infrastructure, and social stability. Japanese culture also includes ideas that connect with Buddhist economics. Ikigai, often translated as a sense of purpose, reflects meaning in daily life. Mottainai, linked to regret over waste, reflects respect for resources. Japan is not a perfect example, but it shows that a society can value purpose, balance, and stability while still being a major advanced economy. 

Iceland provides another useful example. Between 2015 and 2019, it tested shorter working hours for thousands of employees. Many workers moved from a 40-hour week to around 35 or 36 hours, without losing pay. In many workplaces, productivity stayed the same or improved, while workers reported less stress and better work-life balance. This challenges the idea that longer hours always mean better economic results. 

Bhutan is probably the clearest example of Buddhist economics in national policy. Since the 1970s, Bhutan has used Gross National Happiness, or GNH, to guide development. Instead of judging progress only through GDP, GNH considers health, education, culture, environment, time use, well-being, and community life. Bhutan’s approach asks whether development genuinely improves people’s lives, rather than only whether it increases income. 

What Could Be Applied? 

Many Buddhist economic ideas already appear in mainstream economics and business. ESG investing, for example, considers environmental, social, and governance factors alongside financial returns. 

Another example is the circular economy. Instead of designing products to be used briefly and thrown away, circular models aim to repair, reuse, and recycle materials. This reflects the Buddhist concern with avoiding waste and respecting limited resources. 

There is also growing interest in moving beyond GDP as the main measure of national success. Indexes such as the OECD Better Life Index, the UN Human Development Index, and the World Happiness Report measure progress more broadly, including health, education, life satisfaction, inequality, and environmental quality. 

These approaches do not require countries to abandon capitalism. They suggest that markets need better goals and limits. Economic activity can still involve innovation, trade, and profit, but it should be guided by a wider understanding of well-being. 

Criticisms and Limitations 

Buddhist economics also has weaknesses. The first problem is that modern welfare states often depend on economic growth. Healthcare, pensions, education, and public services require tax revenue. If growth slows too much, governments may struggle to fund these systems, especially in countries with older populations. 

The second problem is measurement. GDP is limited, but it is clear and easy to compare across countries. Happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction are harder to measure because they can be influenced by culture, expectations, and personal circumstances. 

The third problem is competition. A company that reduces working hours, pays higher wages, or limits environmental damage may face higher costs than competitors that do not. This means some principles may only work widely if governments create shared rules or countries cooperate internationally. 

These criticisms do not mean Buddhist economics should be ignored. They show that it must be applied carefully. The point is not to stop growth, but to think more clearly about when growth helps, when it causes harm, and how economies can focus more on people’s real needs. 

The Purpose of the Economy 

The most important contribution of Buddhist economics is that it asks what growth is for. If the purpose of an economy is human flourishing, then GDP alone is not enough. People also need meaningful work, time to rest, stable communities, fair opportunities, and a healthy environment. 

Capitalism has produced enormous wealth and innovation. But its current form also encourages overconsumption, overwork, and environmental damage. Buddhist economics does not offer a complete replacement for capitalism. However, it reminds us that economies are tools, not ends in themselves. 

The lesson taken from this article is not that societies should stop developing, but that development should be judged by whether it genuinely improves human life. Buddhist economics is not a rejection of capitalism, but a challenge to make it more humane and sustainable. 

Sources 

Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. 

World Bank. (2024). Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024. 

Our World in Data. (2024). Self-reported life satisfaction vs. GDP per capita. 

Easterlin, R. A., McVey, L. A., Switek, M., Sawangfa, O., & Zweig, J. S. (2010). The happiness–income paradox revisited. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Autonomy & Alda. (2021). Going Public: Iceland’s Journey to a Shorter Working Week. 

OECD. (2024). Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index. 

Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Gross National Happiness. 

OECD. Better Life Index. 

UNDP. Human Development Index / Human Development Reports..   

Theme: Economics 

Margarida Ferreira

Writer

The Confidence Gap: Why High-Achieving Women Still Doubt Themselves

Posted on by Leave a comment


On imposter syndrome, the roots of self-doubt, and what the research actually tells us.

by Luisa Tabatabai & Mariella Staby,
Community Research Team, Nova Women in Business

She has the degrees, the title, the track record. Her colleagues respect her. Her results speak for themselves. And yet, somewhere between the meeting room and the mirror, she wonders: Does anyone know I don’t really belong here?

This is imposter syndrome. For high-achieving women, it is not a character flaw or a passing phase. It is a documented, pervasive pattern with measurable consequences for careers, organisations, and ambition itself.

Where It Begins

The term “imposter phenomenon” was coined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, who studied 150 high-achieving women in the United States. Each had been formally recognised for her professional and academic success. And yet, despite the external validation, nearly all struggled to internalise their accomplishments, attributing their achievements to luck, timing, or the inability of others to see through them. What Clance and Imes identified was not simply low self-esteem. It was something more specific: a persistent disconnect between objective achievement and subjective self-perception. Success, no matter how documented, failed to silence the internal voice insisting it was undeserved.

Decades later, this phenomenon remains stubbornly persistent, and its roots, research suggests, run earlier and deeper than the workplace.

The Confidence Gap Begins in Education

One underappreciated strand of the research traces the confidence gap to the classroom itself, long before professional life begins. A landmark study by Colbeck, Cabrera, and Terenzini (2001), published in The Review of Higher Education, examined how teaching practices shape students’ professional self-perceptions and found that the effect is not gender-neutral. Even when controlling for academic performance, women consistently emerged from higher education with lower professional confidence than their male peers. The implications are significant: the gap is not simply about what students learn, but about how educational environments communicate to students, particularly women, whether they belong.

This early erosion of professional confidence creates compounding disadvantages that follow women into their careers. Carlin, Gelb, Belinne, and Ramchand (2018), writing in Business Horizons, document one of its most consequential effects: women are significantly more likely than men to withdraw from a job application if they believe they lack even one listed qualification — whereas men routinely apply despite perceived skill gaps. The result is a self-imposed filter on ambition that costs both women and the organisations that might have hired them.

The Research: More Than Anecdote

For a long time, imposter syndrome was treated primarily as an individual problem, something to be managed through therapy or mindset coaching. More recently, large-scale data has told a more structural story.

A 2024 meta-analysis published in Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, drawing on 115 effect sizes and over 40,000 participants, confirmed what Clance and Imes originally proposed: women experience imposter syndrome more frequently and more intensely than men. The findings were consistent across academic, professional, and healthcare settings and spanned participants in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Research from Cornell University adds another dimension. Studies there found that men tend to overestimate their abilities and their performance, while women consistently underestimate both, even when their actual output is equivalent in quality and quantity. The performance gap is not real. The confidence gap is.

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, in their influential 2014 Atlantic essay and subsequent book The Confidence Gap, argue that success correlates as closely with confidence as it does with competence and that the natural consequence of chronically low confidence is inaction: opportunities not pursued, hands not raised, promotions not sought.

Eagly  and  Johnson’s  foundational  1990  meta-analysis  across  162  studies in Psychological Bulletin adds important nuance here. Their research found that while women and men do not differ significantly in task-oriented leadership effectiveness in organisational settings, women consistently tended toward more democratic and participative leadership styles. This matters in the context of the confidence gap: women’s collaborative, consensus-building approach to leadership is genuinely effective, yet it may be less visible, less self-promoting, and therefore less likely to be recognised without deliberate institutional attention.

High Achievement Offers No Immunity

One of the more unsettling findings in this space is that professional success does not dissolve self-doubt, it can intensify it.

A 2020 KPMG study surveyed 750 high-performing executive women, all within one or two steps of the C-suite, representing over 150 organisations. Three-quarters reported having personally experienced imposter syndrome at some point in their careers. Nearly half said their feelings of self-doubt stemmed from never having expected to reach the level of success they had achieved. Eighty-one percent believed they placed more pressure on themselves not to fail than their male counterparts did.

Data from the Survey Center on American Life paints a similar picture at a broader scale. Among young working women, more than half reported feeling “not good at their job” at least once or twice in a single week, compared to 46% of young men. Strikingly, educational attainment offered little protection: college-educated women reported higher rates of self-doubt than women with less formal education, reinforcing the conclusion that credentials alone do not build internal confidence.

Beyond the Boardroom: The Confidence Gap Across Domains

The consequences of the confidence gap extend well beyond career advancement. Research published in Management Science in 2025 by Bucher-Koenen, Alessie, Lusardi, and van Rooij, drawing on a carefully designed survey experiment, found that what appears to be a substantial gender gap in financial literacy is, to a meaningful degree, a confidence gap in disguise. When women were given no option to answer “I don’t know,” they frequently chose the correct answer. The researchers estimated that approximately one-third of the observed financial literacy gender gap is explained not by a genuine knowledge deficit, but by women’s lower confidence in their own financial knowledge. Both knowledge and confidence, they found, independently predict stock market participation, meaning that underconfidence has measurable economic consequences for women’s long-term wealth accumulation.

The picture is consistent across sectors. A 2025 qualitative study by Khan, Jamil, Muhammad, and colleagues, published in BMC Health Services Research, examined the experiences of women in healthcare leadership in Pakistan. Despite comprising a substantial majority of the academic medicine faculty, women remain severely underrepresented in leadership positions. Among the key barriers identified were not only structural and cultural obstacles, unsupportive work environments, the double burden of domestic and professional responsibilities, but also internalised lack of confidence and self-doubt, even among women who had already achieved significant professional recognition.

A Systemic Problem Wearing a Personal Mask

There is a real risk in framing imposter syndrome purely as an internal condition, one that women must diagnose and fix within themselves. Increasingly, researchers and organisational psychologists are pushing back on this framing.

Not everyone agrees that imposter syndrome is the right lens through which to view women’s self-doubt. In a widely discussed 2021 Harvard Business Review essay, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey argued that the concept itself does more harm than good, not because the experience is fictitious, but because naming it “syndrome” locates the problem inside the woman rather than inside the institution.

Their critique is pointed: telling women they have imposter syndrome, and coaching them to overcome it, places the burden of repair on the people least responsible for the conditions that created the self-doubt in the first place. Tulshyan and Burey further emphasise that for women of colour, the framing is especially inadequate, their hesitation and guardedness in professional spaces is often not a cognitive distortion but an accurate read of environments where they face compounded racial and gender bias simultaneously. Tulshyan and Burey do not dispute that women experience profound self-doubt; they dispute that the solution is psychological rather than structural.

Corporate environments were largely designed by and for a narrow demographic. Women, particularly women of colour, often operate as minorities in rooms where the informal rules, communication norms, and pathways to recognition were built without them in mind. The self-doubt they experience does not arise in a vacuum. It is, in many cases, a rational response to genuinely ambiguous signals: environments where their competence is more frequently questioned, where their successes receive less attribution, and where the costs of visible failure are perceived to be higher. As the PMC literature on imposter syndrome in academic medicine has documented, the phenomenon is associated with reduced career planning, less ambition-seeking behaviour, and lower likelihood of pursuing leadership at the precise moments when confidence and decisive action matter most.

Carlin and colleagues (2018) are explicit about the organisational dimension: closing the confidence gap is not solely women’s responsibility. Organisations benefit materially when they actively discourage the equation of low confidence with low competence, build mentoring structures that apply equally to women, and create cultures where women’s contributions are attributed accurately and visibly.

The Confidence Curve and What It Requires

Not all the findings point in one direction. Research from Zenger Folkman shows that women’s confidence grows more steeply with age and experience than men’s, suggesting that the gap, though real, is not fixed. With time, with meaningful mentorship, and with organisations that create conditions for women to see their impact reflected back to them, the internal narrative can shift. But that observation also contains an implicit cost: the opportunities lost in the early and middle years, the ideas not shared, the roles not applied for, the negotiations not entered. Confidence that arrives late still arrives after its most consequential moments have passed.

The evidence from education (Colbeck et al., 2001), from business leadership (Carlin et al., 2018; Kay C Shipman, 2014), from healthcare (Khan et al., 2025), from finance (Bucher-Koenen et al., 2025), and from psychology (Clance & Imes, 1978; meta-analysis, 2024) converges on the same conclusion: the confidence gap is real, it is cross-sector, and it is costly. Closing it requires more than encouraging women to believe in themselves. It requires examining and rebuilding the educational and professional environments that make self-doubt so rational in the first place.

Conclusion

by Giulia Randon,
Head of Arts&Culture, Nova Awareness Club

What perhaps matters most, beyond statistics and research findings, is the reminder that a person’s value can never be reduced to their achievements, productivity, or moments of failure. The way we perceive ourselves should not fluctuate entirely according to success or inadequacy, because human worth exists independently from performance.

In many ways, the very existence of doubt can also reflect awareness. The more we grow, learn, and understand ourselves, the more questions naturally emerge. Perhaps insecurity is not always a sign of weakness, but sometimes the consequence of complexity, sensitivity, and intelligence itself. What truly matters is ensuring that these doubts do not turn into self-destruction, but instead become the starting point for building a stronger and more conscious sense of self-worth.

And while research often highlights differences in the way confidence manifests across genders, these reflections ultimately speak to something deeply human and universal. People are inherently different from one another, in personality, experience, emotion, and perception, and it is precisely this diversity that gives richness both to human relationships and to collective environments. The goal, then, is not uniformity, but the creation of spaces where vulnerability does not diminish value, and where uncertainty can coexist with growth.

Perhaps true confidence is not the absence of fragility, but the ability to carry it without allowing it to define our worth.

In collaboration with:

Community Research Team, Nova Women in Business

Luisa Tabatabai & Mariella Staby

References

Bucher-Koenen, T., Alessie, R., Lusardi, A., C Van Rooij, M. (2025). Fearless woman: Financial literacy, confidence, and stock market participation. Management Science, 71(9), 7414–7430.

Carlin, B. A., Gelb, B. D., Belinne, J. K., C Ramchand, L. (2018). Bridging the gender gap in confidence. Business Horizons, c1(5), 765–774.

Clance, P. R., C Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247.

Colbeck, C. L., Cabrera, A. F., C Terenzini, P. T. (2001). Learning professional confidence: Linking teaching practices, students’ self-perceptions, and gender. The Review of Higher Education, 24(2), 173–191.

Current Research in Behavioral Sciences meta-analysis (2024). Gender differences in impostor phenomenon: A meta-analytic review. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences.

Eagly, A. H., C Johnson, B. T. (1990). Gender and leadership style: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 108(2), 233–256. Kay, K., C Shipman, C. (2014). The confidence gap. The Atlantic, 14(1), 1–18.

Khan, K. I., Jamil, B., Muhammad, M., Mohsin, S., Khan, A. H., C Javed, M. Q. (2025). Gender inequality in healthcare leadership: The challenges women face in breaking through the glass ceiling. BMC Health Services Research, 25(1), 190.

KPMG LLP. (2020). Advancing the future of women in business: A KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit report.

Survey Center on American Life. (2023). Despite professional successes, many women still experience imposter syndrome.

Tulshyan, R., C Burey, J. (2021). Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. Harvard Business Review. Zenger Folkman. (2024). The confidence gap in men and women: How to overcome it.

The shadow of fast fashion 

Posted on by Leave a comment

 Over the course of history, the evolution of technology and methods of production has enabled humans to evolve from mere animals to creatures with the most complex societies and activities ever performed by living beings. We did not just find easier ways to collect what nature could give us; we started manipulating those resources for our own good. Nowadays, practically all the items we interact with every day, from food to buildings and clothes, have been touched by industrial processes or made from scratch. Humanity chose to live in a world constructed by its own kind. 

Despite all the benefits that the industrial revolution brought, such as increasing productivity and reducing production costs, it has always carried a shadow: the exploitation of its workers. In western countries, the cradle of industrialization, a history of labor abuses like excessive working hours, negligible salaries, and nonexistent vacations has long been fought by unions and non-governmental organizations, and therefore has been reduced or annihilated. This is one of the reasons given to explain the relocation of factories of European and North American brands to the Global South. The crimes that are condemned in our pro-Human Rights societies have strategically migrated to other parts of the planet, like Asia, Africa, and South America.  

 In our daily lives, we see the result of workers’ suffering in those areas: our cheap, easily accessible clothing. Indeed, the garment and textile industries are among the most prone to exploiting their employees. They employ about 100 million people worldwide, of whom around 80% are women. Only 1% to 2% earn a salary that allows the coverage of the basic living costs like housing and food. This happens, in part, so that the profit margins of the companies are the highest possible, due to extremely low production costs. In countries like China, Vietnam, or Bangladesh, there is a hunt for those who are in such precarious living conditions that they accept some of the worst labor conditions seen today.  

 Asia is home to about 75% of the world’s garment and textile workforce, in which the majority produces for fast fashion brands like Pull&Bear, Stradivarius, H&M, and Mango. A recent report by International Amnesty has concluded that in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, and Pakistan, anti-union movements take place to repress recent protests by those who ask for better living conditions. A strategic alliance between brand and industry leaders, as well as miserable laws and inefficient organizations to protect workers in those countries, leads to a trap in which employees are caught, destined for poverty. This way, it also becomes simpler for the Western companies to blame the national policies of the countries where they install their factories for poor labor rules and therefore exonerate themselves of human rights violations.     

In Bangladesh, the garment sector represents 16% of GDP and 84% of exportations; however, 91% of the workers do not receive a salary good enough to buy the necessary food for their families. Besides, approximately 25% suffer abuse by their superiors, including sexual abuse, the majority of whom are, of course, female. 

 India is especially characterized by the vulnerability of women. Since many are home garment workers, they are not recognized as employees by law and therefore are not eligible to receive pensions and other benefits. Furthermore, both genders face highly discrimination due to their caste and social class. At the same time, increasing restrictions on workers’ ability to form and join independent trade unions have caused union numbers to decline significantly. In regions such as Delhi, complicated administrative procedures and the refusal to register unions have greatly weakened workplace union membership. 

 The Chinese workforce also faces severe difficulties. The north-western province of Xinjiang is the homeland of the Muslim minority Uyghur, who produces 80% of the Chinese cotton and 20% on a global level. The cotton of one in five products worldwide, including clothing, originates from their plantations and factories. However, these products are stained with crimes against humanity. The Chinese government has created forced labor camps to aggregate almost two million citizens of this and other religious minorities, with the justification to combat extremism. There, children are separated from their families and re-educated to lose all connections with their culture and become work machines. The employees sleep in cells, where sexual violence and female sterilization have been reported by the UN. Some of the almost uncountable brands that still take advantage of this mass forced labor are Polo Ralph Lauren, Lacoste, IKEA, Nike, Adidas, Zara, and Victoria´s Secret.  

 Additionally, more than leading to human rights violations, the garment industry, especially the fast fashion one, causes huge environmental damage. Consumers today buy 60% more clothes than they did in 2000, while keeping garments for only half as long. This culture of overconsumption generates enormous waste: a truckload of textiles is either burned or sent to landfills every second. Besides, the fashion industry produces more than 92 million tons of textile waste annually and consumes approximately 79 trillion liters of water every year. The production of a single cotton shirt requires around 2,700 liters of water, which is enough to satisfy one person’s drinking needs for two and a half years. Additionally, synthetic fibers such as polyester release microplastics into oceans and waterways, contributing to marine pollution. 

 All this production and waste largely contribute to climate change. Several reports estimate that fashion is responsible for around 10% of global carbon emissions, surpassing international aviation and maritime shipping combined. The production of one pair of jeans can emit as much carbon dioxide as driving a car for over 80 miles. Clothing production has nearly doubled in the last 15 years, driven by rapid fashion trend cycles and mass consumption.  

 More recently, non-governmental organizations started to spread more awareness about the catastrophic impacts of the fashion industry. Slow fashion and secondhand clothing have more marketing than a few years ago. However, an actual transaction to sustainable production and consumption cycles is still a utopian dream. Garments that weren´t made based on the exploitation of nature and workers are usually extremely rare and above the monetary costs that common citizens can afford daily. This is why only a complete revolution in the consumption patterns and impulses of the youngest generations in developed countries, allied with a transformation of the production methods themselves, can, indeed, make a difference for the better.   

Sources 

Júlia Lobão

Writer

Black Gold in Flames: How the Iran War Is Reshaping Global Oil Markets 

Posted on by Leave a comment

On February 28, 2026, U.S. and Israeli forces launched strikes on Iran, triggering a conflict that sent shockwaves far beyond the Middle East. Within days, one of the world’s most critical energy arteries,  the Strait of Hormuz, was declared closed by Iranianforces, causing what the International Energy Agency (IEA) has defined as the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”  

Oil prices have reached levels not seen in years and inflationary pressures are mounting globally. To understand how bad this crisis actually is, one must first understand the centrality of the Strait of Hormuz to the global energy system. 

The Strait of Hormuz: The World’s Most Critical Chokepoint 

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway, barely 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point, separating Iran from Oman. Yet through this sliver of ocean flows roughly 27-30% of the world’s maritime crude oil and petroleum trade, along with significant volumes of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Any disruption here is felt almost immediately in markets from Tokyo to London. 

Starting on March 4, 2026, Iranian forces declared the Strait “closed,” threatening and attacking on vessels attempting transit. Oil-producing nations of the Gulf (Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) saw their collective output drop by at least 10 million barrels per day by mid-March. QatarEnergy, the world’s largest LNG exporter, declared force majeure on all its contracts as tankers could not leave the Gulf.  

To notice is that Asian economies together receive around 84% of crude oil and 83% of LNG transiting the Strait, hence being the ones most exposed. 

Figure 1: The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 30% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes. Source: Forbes. 

A Shock Without Precedent: Price Surges and Market Volatility 

Oil markets have not been a stranger to geopolitical shocks.  

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Brent crude surged past $100 per barrel as markets priced in the risk of supply disruptions from one of the world’s largest energy producers. That spike, dramatic as it was, didn’t last long. 

The 2026 Iran war, instead, has produced a shock of an entirely different magnitude. As the chart below illustrates, the current price surge has already eclipsed the Russia-Ukraine spike in both speed and scale. 

As the Strait closed and Gulf output collapsed, prices climbed relentlessly. March 2026 saw one of the largest single-month oil price jumps ever recorded: Brent gained 51% in a single month, peaking at nearly $120 per barrel. By late April, with peace negotiations stalled and the Strait still functionally closed, Brent briefly touched $126, a four-year high not seen since the most acute phase of the Russia-Ukraine energy crisis. 

Figure 2: Brent crude oil price per barrel (US$), 2021–2026. The chart highlights two defining shocks: the 2022 Russia-Ukraine spike and the steeper, faster surge following the US and Israel attack on Iran in February 2026. Source: Bloomberg / BBC News, data to 30 Apr 2026. 

But it is not only price levels that make these two events different. The 2022 shock was driven by fears of reduced Russian supply, which the market eventually adapted to through rerouted trade flows. The 2026 crisis saw the physical closure of a chokepointthrough which there is no realistic alternative route for most Gulf producers. 

“The market hasn’t seen the full impact of that yet. There’s more to come if the strait remains closed.”  

Darren Woods (CEO of Exxon Mobil, May 1, 2026) 

Ripple Effects: The Global Economy Under Pressure 

The impact of this supply shock extends well beyond gasoline prices. Inflation and stagflation risk have moved to the top of the agenda for central banks. Analysts have forecast that if disruptions persist, global inflation could rise by up to 0.8 percentagepoints, with the risk of stagflation, a combination of slow growth and rising prices, for major economies. The United Nations Secretary-General warned that if the war continues throughout 2026, the world will “confront the specter of a global recession,” addingthat “the consequences are not cumulative – they are exponential.” 

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states themselves have not been spared. Over 80% of the region’s caloric intake is imported via the Strait, and by mid-March roughly 70% of food imports were disrupted, creating a concurrent grocery supply emergency. This adds a wider humanitarian dimension to what began as an energy crisis. 

Figure 3: Crude oil and condensate exports through the Strait of Hormuz by destination country (Q1 2025). China alone accounts for 37.7% of total flows, followed by India (14.7%), South Korea (12.0%), and Japan (10.9%) Source: Visual Capitalist / U.S. Energy InformationAdministration (EIA). 

The Philippines became the first country to declare a national energy emergency on March 24, 2026, importing 98% of its oil from the Middle East. Nepal restricted gas cylinder refills. Myanmar imposed alternate-day driving rules. Aviation has beenseverely disrupted across flight corridors linking Africa, Asia, and Europe.  

Meanwhile, the crisis has created stark divides: the United States, as the world’s largest oil producer, saw crude and petroleum exports surge to nearly 12.9 million barrels per day in April 2026, while oil-importing nations in Asia and Africa bore the heaviest burden. 

Looking Ahead: What Comes Next? 

As of early May 2026, the situation remains deeply uncertain. Brent crude is trading around $108–$112 per barrel, lurching with every twist in diplomatic negotiations conducted through Pakistani mediators. Commodity Context founder Rory Johnston has cautioned that even a sustained reopening of the Strait would trigger only a temporary price relief, as supply chain bottlenecks, infrastructure damage, and production outages would likely anchor Brent in the $80–$90 range, well above pre-crisis levels, for the foreseeable future. 

The damage to LNG infrastructure compounds the problem. Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, struck by Iranian missiles on March 18, faces an estimated 3 to 5 years of repair work, sending LNG spot prices in Asia up by over 140%. With strategic petroleumreserves being drawn down and commercial inventories depleted, Exxon’s Woods has warned that prices may need to rise further to curb demand once those buffers run out. 

The crisis has also injected new urgency into the debate around energy security and the green transition.  

As the chart above makes clear, oil markets remain acutely vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. Whether the lesson is finally taken seriously may prove to be one of the most consequential legacies of the 2026 Iran war. 

Sources 

CNBC; Bloomberg; Forbes; CBS News; Congressional Research Service; BBC News; Reuters; Visual Capitalist; U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Rebecca Fratello 

Writer

DJ Systems and DJ Types 

Posted on by Leave a comment

There’s a tendency to treat DJ setups as preference. Vinyl if it’s about authenticity, controllers if it’s about convenience, DVS if it’s somewhere in between. The assumption is that the core skill stays the same and the equipment just changes how it’s executed. 

In practice, that’s not what happens. 

Each system trains different habits. Not in a philosophical way, but in very concrete, repeatable situations: how tracks are started, how timing is handled, how mistakes are corrected, how quickly decisions are made. After a few months, those differences stop being technical and start becoming instinctive. The same person, using a different setup long enough, would not mix in the same way. 

On Vinyl, Timing Never Settles 

With vinyl, even a clean mix isn’t stable. Two tracks that sound aligned will slowly drift apart. It’s not dramatic, but it’s constant. That means timing isn’t something that gets “fixed” once – it’s something that has to be maintained the entire time the tracks are playing together. 

In practical terms, that leads to constant small adjustments. A slight push on the record to speed it up, a gentle drag to slow it down, a quick touch to bring things back into place. None of these are big corrections. Most of them are barely visible, but they happen continuously. 

This builds a very specific skill: noticing drift early. Not when it’s already obvious, but when it’s just starting. After a while, it becomes possible to feel when a track is moving ahead or falling behind before it’s clearly audible. 

It also changes how transitions are approached. Because there’s no visual reference for phrasing, structure is learned through repetition. Tracks are recognized by how they unfold, not by where they sit on a screen. Starting a track at the right moment becomes a matter of internal timing, not external alignment. 

Mistakes take longer to fix. If a track is brought in too early or slightly off, the correction happens gradually. There’s no instant reset. That makes hesitation less useful – waiting doesn’t provide more certainty. Decisions tend to be made earlier and then adjusted in real time if needed. 

With DVS, Timing Can Be Checked Instead of Felt 

DVS setups keep the turntables but add a screen with information: waveforms, beat grids, cue points. The physical interaction stays the same, but timing no longer has to rely entirely on hearing. 

If a mix feels slightly off, it’s possible to glance at the waveform and see it. If phrasing is uncertain, it can be confirmed visually. The system provides a second layer of feedback that wasn’t there before. 

This changes how decisions are made. Instead of committing based only on what is heard, there is the option to verify first. Transitions can be delayed slightly until things are clearer. The timing of drops and breakdowns becomes easier to anticipate. 

The benefit is control. Mistakes are caught earlier. Alignment can be corrected faster. Larger music libraries become manageable because tracks can be searched and previewed quickly. 

At the same time, the reliance on internal timing decreases. When information is available, it gets used. The ear is still active, but it’s no longer the only reference point. 

Another shift happens in how attention is distributed. On vinyl, most of the focus sits on the mix itself. With DVS, attention is split between the decks and the screen – managing the current transition while scanning for what comes next. The skill becomes not just mixing, but handling multiple inputs without losing track of what’s playing. 

On Controllers, Timing Becomes an Action, not a Process 

Controllers and CDJs take the digital side further. Timing is structured and visible. Beat grids show alignment. Cue points mark exact entry moments. Tracks can be started precisely on beat without manual adjustment. 

This removes the need for continuous correction. Instead of keeping two tracks aligned, the focus shifts to starting them correctly. Once they’re in, the system keeps them together. 

That turns timing into something discrete. A track is either started at the right moment or not. There’s less in-between. The process becomes: prepare, then execute. 

This allows for speed. Transitions can happen faster because less time is spent adjusting. It also allows for more complex techniques – looping sections, layering tracks, jumping between cue points – all of which depend on precise timing that would be difficult to maintain manually. 

The trade-off is that small timing adjustments are no longer part of the process. There’s no need to constantly monitor alignment, so that skill doesn’t develop in the same way. Instead, the focus shifts toward structuring the set and choosing the right moment to act. 

Preparation Starts Before the Set 

One of the biggest differences in digital setups is how much happens before playing. 

Tracks are organized in advance. Cue points are set. Sections are marked. Playlists are built for different situations. Part of the work is done away from the decks, deciding how tracks might fit together before they’re ever played. 

This changes the role of memory. On vinyl, knowing a track means remembering how it sounds and when things happen. On digital systems, some of that knowledge is stored externally. It’s visible on the screen, ready to be used. 

During the set, this speeds things up. Instead of recalling details, they can be recognized instantly. The focus shifts from remembering to navigating. 

That also changes the feeling of the set itself. It’s less about discovering what works in the moment and more about choosing between options that were already prepared. 

Mistakes Behave Differently Depending on the Setup 

The way mistakes play out has a direct effect on how risks are taken. 

On vinyl, fixing a mistake takes time. If two tracks fall out of sync or a transition is poorly timed, the correction is gradual and often noticeable. This makes mistakes more expensive and encourages more careful decisions. 

On digital systems, mistakes are easier to hide. A track can be re-cued instantly. A loop can extend a section to buy time. Alignment can be fixed quickly. Because the cost is lower, it becomes easier to experiment. 

This doesn’t just affect outcomes – it affects behavior. The same DJ is likely to take more risks on a system where recovery is quick than on one where mistakes linger. 

Track Selection Changes with the System 

The way music is chosen also shifts. 

With vinyl, the number of available tracks in a set is limited. Each one tends to be well known, played multiple times, understood in detail. Selection is constrained, but intentional. 

With digital systems, the limitation disappears. Hundreds or thousands of tracks can be accessed. Selection becomes faster, but familiarity with each track may be shallower. 

This leads to different strengths. Vinyl DJs often rely on deep knowledge of fewer tracks. Digital DJs rely on quickly filtering through many options to find what fits the moment. 

What Actually Changes 

The basic task stays the same: choosing what to play next and when to bring it in. 

What changes is everything around that decision. How much information is available. How quickly can a mistake be fixed. How much can be prepared in advance. Whether timing is something that has to be maintained or something that can be executed once and left alone. 

Those differences shape how the decision is made. Not just what gets played, but how confidently, how quickly, and under what conditions. 

The Setup Trains the DJ 

After enough time, the equipment stops feeling like a separate thing. The focus shifts to the music, the flow of the set, the reaction of the room. But by then, the system has already done its work. 

It has trained certain responses. When to act, how to correct, how much to rely on instinct versus information. It has defined what feels natural under pressure. 

So the difference between vinyl, DVS, and controllers isn’t just technical. It’s practical. Each one builds a different kind of consistency, a different kind of confidence, and a different way of handling the same moment – deciding what comes next and committing to it. 

Teresa Catita

Editor and Writer

“Years And Years”: The Series That Predicted World Future 

Posted on by Leave a comment

Image 1- The Lyons family  

Broadcasted in 2019, the television series Years and Years functioned less as traditional science fiction and more as a sociological simulation. By extrapolating the geopolitical, technological, and economic data available at the end of the 2010s, the series constructed a near-future timeline that closely mirrors the stark reality of the 2020s. To ground these macro-level global crises, the narrative anchors itself to the Lyons family, an ordinary household whose members serve as micro-level case studies. Over a span of fifteen years, the series documents the family’s diverging reactions as they are directly impacted by unfolding historical events, experiencing everything from financial displacement and political radicalization to technological assimilation and refugee advocacy. Through a comparative analysis of the series’ fictional timeline and our contemporary global situation, it becomes evident that the broadcast was highly predictive. It successfully forecasted events such as the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, a second term for Donald Trump, and the sweeping rise of global populism. By analysing its correlation to our current reality, we can learn from the Lyons family’s reactions to these unprecedented societal shifts. 

The Statistical Rise of Global Populism 

Image 2- Emma Thompson as Vivienne Rock 

In Years and Years, the character Vivienne Rook embodies the rapid ascent of modern populist movements. Initially dismissed as a fringe, controversial entertainer, Rook leverages anti-establishment rhetoric and unfiltered broadcasting to bypass traditional political decorum, ultimately being elected Prime-Minister of the United Kingdom and securing immense executive power. When cross-referenced with real-world political data from the late 2010s through the 2020s, this fictional trajectory accurately mirrors the measurable global shift toward populist leadership. Data collected by prominent political science organizations, such as the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the Pew Research Centre, demonstrates a verifiable surge in populist electoral success during this period. The fictional trajectory mirrors reality: between 2018 and 2023, right-wing populist movements successfully transitioned from the political fringe to securing executive power in nations such as Italy, Argentina, and the Netherlands, while maintaining immense, disruptive electoral influence in the United States and France. Rather than an isolated anomaly, this trend reflects a broader, systemic reaction against globalization, economic stagnation, and institutional distrust. The narrative uses the Lyons family to illustrate how a populace fractures in response to this political shift. Rosie Lyons serves as the target demographic for populist messaging, feeling economically marginalized, she enthusiastically embraces Rook’s blunt, anti-establishment rhetoric, demonstrating how populism capitalizes on working-class disenfranchisement. Conversely, Edith Lyons represents fierce ideological resistance, dedicating herself to actively exposing the human rights abuses enacted by Rook’s administration. Perhaps most critically, the matriarch Muriel and her grandson Stephen illustrate the mechanics of complicity. Muriel’s attributes Rook’s rise to the everyday apathy and consumerism, small actions that most of society adopted that in the long run turned helped building this scenario. While Stephen’s eventual employment managing Rook’s secret immigration detention centres demonstrates how personal financial ruin can drive educated citizens to collaborate with extremist policies.  

Image 3- Pew Research Center study demonstrating the predicted rise of populism 

Geopolitical Escalation: The War in Ukraine 

Continuing the analysis of the Lyons family, the series uses their experiences to map the human cost of severe geopolitical instability, most notably predicting the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In the narrative, Daniel Lyons’ relationship with Viktor, a Ukrainian refugee fleeing persecution and conflict, serves to bring the abstract concept of war directly into the domestic sphere of an ordinary British family. Written in 2018 and aired in 2019, the show depicted a Russian military incursion into Ukraine that subsequently triggers a catastrophic, continent-wide displacement. When analysing geopolitical events from February 2022 onward, the series’ timeline stands as a strikingly accurate forecast of the massive humanitarian fallout that occurred.According to empirical data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the real-world invasion displaced millions of citizens within weeks, closely mirroring the systemic European border crises and overwhelmed infrastructure depicted on screen. The show correctly anticipated that the ripple effects of such a conflict would not remain localized but would instead fundamentally alter international immigration policies and border security protocols across the continent. As noted in international security analyses following the real-world invasion: “The sudden displacement caused by the 2022 escalation created the fastest-growing refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War, exposing the fragility of modern international asylum frameworks.” Furthermore, we can, on the micro-level analysis, watch the different approaches used by some members of the family to illustrate polarized societal responses to such crises. Daniel Lyons represents direct humanitarian empathy, his relationship with Viktor, a Ukrainian refugee fleeing persecution, highlights the desperate and often fatal lengths individuals endure to circumvent broken immigration systems. With a much different approach, his sister Rosie represents the growing societal apathy and distrust toward immigrants. Her character illustrates how economic disenfranchisement can lead ordinary citizens to embrace isolationist policies and reject global humanitarian responsibilities. Both these characters represent with precision the currentpolarized debate of this topic around the world. 

Technological Assimilation: Artificial Intelligence 

Finally, the series utilizes the youngest generation of the Lyons family to examine the profound sociological impact of exponential technological advancement. The character of Bethany embodies the concept of “transhumanism”—a growing desire to transcend the physical body by integrating cybernetic implants and, ultimately, uploading human consciousness to the cloud. Concurrently, the broader societal backdrop of the show depicts widespread economic anxiety as advanced algorithms rapidly displace traditional cognitive labour and professional services, this is an example that happened with the character Celeste, since her job as an accountant was taken by Artificial Intelligence. While full digital consciousness remains theoretical, the series’ depiction of severe workforce automation and the normalization of human-computer interfacing perfectly mirrors the explosive, disruptive growth of the modern Artificial Intelligence sector. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Reportand data from the Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Index, the real-world integration of generative AI (such as Large Language Models) has accelerated at an unprecedented rate since 2022, threatening millions of white-collar roles previously thought immune to automation. Furthermore, actual advancements in neurotechnology, such as successful clinical trials for brain-computer interfaces like Neuralink, demonstrate that the biological-technological merger desired by Bethany is actively transitioning from speculative fiction into medical reality. As highlighted in recent technological labour analyses, “The current acceleration of generative algorithms represents a fundamental restructuring of the global workforce, wherein cognitive automation will rapidly displace traditional roles while simultaneously demanding new, untested frameworks for human-machine integration.” 

Ultimately, Years and Years transcends typical speculative fiction by operating as a data-driven sociological forecast. Through the grounded experiences of the Lyons family, the series provided a highly accurate, predictive model of the 2020s. The show successfully demonstrated that the cascading crises of our current decade, the surge of populist governments, the humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine, and the disruptive integration of Artificial Intelligence, were not sudden anomalies, but the inevitable results of measurable 2019 data trends. By treating the series as a historical case study rather than mere entertainment, we can observe that predictive media serves as a vital tool for societal awareness. The polarized reactions of the Lyons family illustrate a deeply fractured society, yet they also highlight humanity’s inherent, relentless capacity for adaptation. While the societal norms we accept as common today may become entirely unrecognizable in the years ahead, the series proves that we are never truly flying blind, we can always catch a glimpse of what is approaching. The true warning of Years and Years is not that the future is predetermined, but that it is actively unfolding in the present, visible to anyone willing to critically observe the shifting realities of our society. 

Sources: 

  • Years and Years TV series- BBC 

Guilherme Mendonça  

Writer

          Stuck In Motion: The Challenges of Urban Mobility in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area 

          Posted on by Leave a comment

          For nearly three million people spread across the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML), getting from home to work is rarely simple, and getting there on time is never guaranteed. While there have been efforts to improve public transport, promote sustainability, and modernize infrastructure, progress has often been slow and uneven. At the same time, the region continues to struggle with congestion, inequality in access, and structural inefficiencies that hinder its long-term development. As Lisbon grows into a more dynamic capital, attracting tourists, digital nomads, and investment, its mobility system is increasingly under pressure to evolve. 

          This article explores the key challenges shaping urban mobility in the AML, combining structural analysis with the lived reality of daily commuters navigating an increasingly strained system. 

          A Growing Metropolitan Complexity 

          The Lisbon Metropolitan Area is home to nearly three million people, spread across 18 municipalities on both sides of the Tejo River. While the city of Lisbon itself is relatively compact, the surrounding suburbs (such as Amadora, Sintra, Almada, and Loures) have experienced significant population growth over the past decades. This expansion has led to a classic metropolitan challenge: people live far from where they work. 

          For many residents, this translates into long, multi-modal commutes that are not only time-consuming but also unpredictable. A typical journey from Sintra or Margem Sul into central Lisbon can easily exceed one hour each way, particularly when connections fail or services are disrupted. What appears on paper as an integrated system often feels fragmented in practice. 

          The Dominance of Private Cars 

          Despite policy efforts, private cars remain deeply embedded in Lisbon’s mobility structure. This reflects gaps in public transport reliability, coverage, and convenience. 

          When you can’t count on your train running on time, when buses are overcrowded and connections are poorly synced, the car becomes the “safe” option: not because people love sitting in traffic in IC19 or the 25 de Abril Bridge, but because at least the delay is somewhat predictable. 

          This creates an obvious feedback loop: more cars mean more congestion, more congestion makes bus routes slower, slower buses push more people into cars, and the loop repeats itself. 

          The Metro: A Network That Stopped Growing  

          Lisbon’s public transport system has improved in affordability and integration due to the Navegante pass, but its operational reality remains inconsistent. 

          A great example is the metro system. Despite being the backbone of urban mobility, it has not opened a new station in 10 years. Expansion projects, such as the Circular Line and the Red Line extension to Alcântara, face repeated delays and funding uncertainties (just recently was announced an extra €48M for the Circular Line, which was supposed to be open by 2023), raising doubts about their timelines and effectiveness.  

          At the same time, ongoing works, while necessary, have created disruptions across the network. The construction of the future Santos station, for example, has led to recurring service interruptions affecting both metro and rail connections in the Cascais line. 

          The planned Circular line introduces another layer of controversy: once it’s running, it will break the current direct connection between Odivelas and the city center, forcing passengers to change lines at Campo Grande. While the project aims to improve overall network efficiency, it risks concentrating even more pressure on an already busy interchange. For daily commuters, this means an additional transfer, longer travel time and more crowding at a station already running close to its limit at peak hours. 

          The Rail Experience: Daily Frictions 

          For many commuters, the real test of Lisbon’s mobility system lies in its suburban rail lines. 

          On the Cascais Line, modernization has been ongoing for several years, aiming to improve infrastructure, electrification systems, and long-term service quality. However, the process itself has caused recurring disruptions, including partial closures, replacement bus services, and timetable instability. 

          Similarly, on the Sintra Line, the busiest in the country, commuters have experienced declining service frequency in routes to and from Rossio during peak hours, from 10 to 15 minute intervals, making trains and platforms ever more crowded as the suburban population continues to grow. 

          These aren’t simple inconveniences. For regular commuters, a missed train cascades into a late arrival, a missed meeting, a stressed morning. On top of these disruptions, recurrent strikes affecting CP services turn the suburban rail network into complete chaos. 

          Housing Pressures and Mobility Inequality 

          Urban mobility in Lisbon cannot be understood without considering housing dynamics. As central Lisbon became unaffordable, people moved to the periphery. Now the periphery is becoming unaffordable too, pushing people even further out: into longer commutes, more strained networks, and further from the services they use. The transport system absorbs the consequences of failed housing policy decisions, and it also creates a clear divide: those who can afford to live closer to the center enjoy shorter, more reliable commutes, while others face longer, more uncertain journeys. 

          Mobility, in this sense, becomes a marker of inequality, both in time and in quality of life. 

          Governance and Execution Gaps 

          One of the most persistent challenges in Lisbon’s mobility system is not the lack of plans, but the difficulty of executing them. Large-scale projects, like the planned metro expansion, the new airport and the third crossing of the Tejo continuously face delays due to governance problems, legal challenges and inconsistency in funding. 

          At the same time, coordination between municipalities and transport operators remains inconsistent, leading to fragmented solutions rather than a cohesive metropolitan strategy. 

          Potential Paths Forward  

          From the perspective of someone who uses public transport daily, improving urban mobility in Lisbon requires consistent, targeted improvements: 

          Prioritize reliability over expansion: Before building new lines, ensuring that existing services run frequently and on time would have an immediate impact on users’ lives. 

          Stabilizing ongoing projects: Minimizing disruptions during infrastructure works, like in the Cascais line, should be a priority to maintain user trust. 

          Better frequency management: Increasing peak-hour frequency on high-demand lines like Sintra would reduce overcrowding and improve system efficiency. 

          Integrated planning: Transport, housing, and urban development policies must be aligned to reduce commuting distances rather than simply accommodate them. 

          User-centered design: Decisions about routes, transfers, and infrastructure should reflect how residents actually move through the city and their necessities. 

          Transparent timelines: Clear communication about delays and project timelines can help rebuild trust in public transport institutions. 

          Conclusion: A System in Transition 

          Urban mobility in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area has stopped being just an infrastructure problem. It has become a question of direction and at this point, patching things up as they break isn’t keeping pace with how much the region has grown and how complex it’s become. 

          For the people using the system every day, the frustration isn’t that nothing is being built. It’s that what gets built doesn’t always translate into a better experience. Every delayed train, every overcrowded platform, every unnecessary transfer erodes something that’s hard to rebuild once it’s gone: the basic trust that public transport will do what it’s supposed to do. And without that trust, even the most ambitious plans risk falling flat. 

          The choice that Lisbon faces isn’t really complicated to describe, but it’s hard to execute. Keep reacting to problems as they pile up, or commit to a system that works consistently, for everyone, not just for those who can afford to live close enough to the center to make it work. That means new infrastructure, yes, but more than that it means reliability, coordination, and honesty about what’s been promised and what’s been delivered. 

          Because in the end, urban mobility is about shaping how people live, work, and access opportunities. If Lisbon wants to remain a competitive, inclusive, and sustainable city, it cannot afford to remain stuck in motion. 

          Sources: Agência Lusa; CP – Comboios de Portugal; Público; European Comission; Lisboa Secreta; HERE Urban Mobility Index; INE – Instituto Nacional de Estatística; SIC Notícias  

          Nuno Cançado

          Writer

          The Vandalism of the Eye: Who Told You the Silence Was Hostile?  

          Posted on by Leave a comment

          We are born with a frantic, stuttering rejection of the motionless frame. 

          The history of the image is not merely a chronicle of what we have chosen to show, but a record of what we have refused to leave alone. To look at a blank wall or a silent screen and feel a rising, metallic tang of panic is to confront a fundamental tension: the suspicion that presence must be proven through the persistent interruption of the stillness. We do not build cathedrals, film three-hour epics, or smear oil across canvas merely to “express”; we do it because the unmarked space is a mouth, and the history of aesthetics is the history of trying to avoid being swallowed. 

          This is the hidden pulse beneath every shutter click and every brushstroke. It is a structural claustrophobia – a manic attempt to colonize the silence before the silence consumes the subject. From the gold-leafed ceilings of the Baroque to the light-polluted screens of the digital age, we are the architects of our own distraction, weaving a tapestry of sensory clutter to hide the fact that the medium itself is ultimately an empty container. 

          The Gilded Barricade: Rituals of Overload 

          In the 17th century, the Baroque period weaponized detail. To step into a cathedral from that era is to be assaulted by a visual fever: gold leaf, marble drapery, and angels spilling out of every cornice until the eye is bruised by the weight of stuff. This was a psychological fortress. If every square inch of the sanctuary is occupied, there is no room for the Great Silence to leak in. 

          We see this same behavior in the cinematic frame. When directors like Terry Gilliam or Peter Greenaway stuff the screen with rotting fruit, rusted gears, and overlapping textures, they create a visual ecosystem so dense that the viewer’s eye is denied a place to land. It is manic distraction elevated to a formal principle. If the eye never stops moving, the mind never has to settle on the terrifying possibility that the image is just a trick of light on a flat surface. 

          This is the art of the “Scream.” It is a violent assertion of presence. But in our era of 8K resolution and infinite CGI, we have moved beyond the Baroque into a kind of digital psychosis. We have pioneered a cinema of constant motion, a rhythmic strobe light designed to keep the consciousness from ever having to face its own reflection in the dark of the theater. We worship the resolution because we can no longer handle the reality of the grain. 

          The Anatomy of the Saboteur: Aesthetics of Starvation 

          If the need to fill is the addiction, then there is a contrary behavior in the history of the image that is far more dangerous: The Ascetic Sabotage. 

          There are those who look at the clutter of the world and find it dishonest. They believe that every gilded angel and every lens flare is a lie told to soothe the viewer. Their behavior is an act of “Visual Fasting.” They want to starve the eye until it is forced to see the bone. This is the root of the Dogme 95 movement – a collective of filmmakers who signed a “Vow of Chastity” to ban special effects, imported props, and directorial credits. They were attempting a cinematic exorcism, stripping away the “furniture” of the story to see what was left of the human animal when it had nowhere to hide. 

          Watching this work is not “peaceful”; it is an irritant. It triggers a physical restlessness. When a camera sits still for ten minutes on a woman peeling potatoes in the films of Chantal Akerman, or a painter like Agnes Martin spends years drawing near-invisible grids on massive canvases, the viewer is being asked to inhabit the stillness. This is the Metaphysical Confrontation. It reveals that the demand for “content” is actually a flight from the medium itself. The saboteur doesn’t want to give the audience a masterpiece; they want to give them the blankness, watching the spectator squirm until they find a way to inhabit the frame. 

          Hauntology: The Presence of Absence 

          There is a third state, perhaps the most unsettling of all, where the “nothing” isn’t empty, but crowded with what is missing. This is the realm of Hauntology, a concept bridging the gap between the physical space and the psychological ghost. 

          When we look at a “Liminal Space” – an empty mall at 3:00 AM, a playground in the fog, or the long-exposure photography of a city where the people have disappeared into a ghost-blur – the viewer does not see a lack of life. They see the failure of purpose. A mall is designed for a crowd; when the crowd is gone, the architecture itself becomes a scream of absence. The space is haunted by the functionality it can no longer fulfill. 

          In cinema, this is the wide shot where the character is rendered infinitesimal against an indifferent landscape. It is the “Empty Room” trope where the camera lingers just three seconds too long after a character has exited. Why do those seconds feel so heavy? Because the stillness is being allowed to breathe, and the realization dawns that the room was never actually “ours.” 

          The human brain is so allergic to the unmarked that it populates these spaces with “presences.” We invent monsters in the dark; we invent “vibes” in empty hallways. We would rather be terrified by a ghost than be bored by the silence. This proves that the mind is a pattern-seeking machine that will hallucinate a “something” just to avoid the unbearable weight of the “nothing.” 

          The Digital Shroud and the End of the “Real” 

          We must confront the modern iteration of this fear: the Infinite Scroll. 

          The internet is the ultimate masterpiece of the “Filled Space.” It is an expanse that can never be satisfied. Every second, hours of video are uploaded; every thumb-flick brings a new image, a new take, a new outrage. We have created a technological environment that ensures we will never, for the rest of human history, have to experience an “unmarked” moment. 

          But this has a profound effect on how we perceive the world. When everything is “filled,” nothing is “significant.” If the Baroque was a gilded fence built to keep the dark out, the Digital Age is a flood that has drowned the world. We see this in the rise of “Post-Internet” art – works that are intentionally over-stimulating, glitchy, and fragmented. They mirror the way our brains now function: a frantic, non-linear jumping from one piece of data to the next. 

          The raw truth is that we have become so accustomed to the noise that stasis now feels like a glitch. When a film dares to be slow, or a painting dares to be a single color, it is often dismissed as “pretentious.” But that label is frequently just a defense mechanism for things that make the viewer feel the silence. We have become like people who have lived in a construction site for so long that we can’t sleep unless there’s a jackhammer outside the window. We are addicted to the hum of the machine because it proves the system is still online. 

          Entropy and the Biological Imperative 

          Nature itself shares this horror. A patch of dirt, left alone, will eventually fill itself with weeds and decay. Life is a “cluttering” force; death is the ultimate “emptiness.” Perhaps the obsession with filling the frame is simply a mimicry of biological growth – an evolutionary reflex to prove that the creative act is still vital. 

          We see this in the “Land Art” of the 1970s, where artists like Robert Smithson moved tons of earth to create spirals in the desert. It was an attempt to impose a human “mark” on a landscape that was already perfect in its indifference. The art wasn’t just the spiral; it was the inevitable fact that the spiral would one day be washed away. This is the central paradox: we build these monuments of light and sound knowing they are sandcastles. But the act of building is the only way the creator knows how to say “I am here” to a universe that isn’t listening. 

          The Autopsy of the Frame 

          To look at the world through this lens is to perform an autopsy on human desire. 

          The Maximalist tries to build a heaven out of clutter, hoping one more detail will make them safe. The Ascetic tries to find truth by throwing the furniture out the window, hoping the “Nothing” will finally speak. The Hauntologist stands in the empty room and listens to the echoes, acknowledging we are just temporary tenants in a space that doesn’t know our names. 

          None of these behaviors are “right” or “wrong.” They are simply ways of coping with the fact that we are finite beings floating in an infinite expansion. The most raw realization is that the universe doesn’t care if we fill it. You can paint a thousand masterpieces, film a million epics, scroll through a billion images – the silence remains. It is the backdrop against which all our noise is measured. 

          The power of a great work – be it a Caravaggio painting where the shadows eat the figures, or a film like 2001: A Space Odyssey where the weight of space is the loudest character – is not that it “fills” the space. It’s that it frames it. It gives the silence a shape, a name, and a texture. It stops trying to hide the mouth of the abyss and lets the audience look inside. 

          Is the unmarked space a lack of life, or is it the only place where life has room to move? We spend our lives running from the “Nothing,” but it is the only thing that is truly ours. The noise belongs to the world, but the silence – the raw, unedited, terrifying silence- is the only place where the image stops performing and the truth begins. 

          Teresa Catita

          Editor and Writer

          The End of the Unipolar World: Is A New Global Order Taking Shape?

          Posted on by Leave a comment

          Is the world entering a multipolarity era?

          For roughly three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood as the world’s unchallenged superpower. Political scientist Charles Krauthammer famously described this era as the “Unipolar Moment”, a period in which no other nation could rival American military, economic, or diplomatic reach. Today, that moment appears to be ending.

          A convergence of forces (e.g., the economic ascent of China, the expansion of the BRICS bloc, shifting US foreign policy, and the growing assertiveness of the Global South) is reshaping the international order at a pace that few anticipated.

          The Architecture of American Dominance

          To understand what is changing, it is necessary to understand what it once was.

          After the Cold War, the United States accounted for roughly 25% of global GDP, operated the world’s most powerful military by a significant margin, and anchored a network of international institutions (think of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund) that largely reflected Western values and priorities. The US dollar became the world’s dominant reserve currency, giving Washington extraordinary leverage over the global financial system.

          This period of unipolarity was not simply a matter of military might: it was a comprehensive structural dominance spanning economics, technology, culture, and governance.

          The Rise of New Powers

          That architecture is now under sustained pressure.

          The most significant challenge comes from China, whose economy has grown from approximately $1.2 trillion in 2000 to over $18 trillion today, a rise from 4% to nearly 18% of global GDP. Simultaneously, the BRICS bloc (originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) has expanded aggressively, and as of 2026 represents over 36% of global GDP measured in purchasing power parity (PPP), already surpassing the G7’s share of roughly 29.6%, according to IMF data.

          This is not merely an economic story. The BRICS nations collectively account for approximately 40% of global trade, according to the Munich Security Report 2025, whose central theme was precisely “Multipolarization”. The report observed that an ongoing power shift toward a greater number of states vying for influence is clearly discernible, marking a decisive shift in the language of mainstream international security analysis. Beyond BRICS, middle powers including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India, Indonesia, and Brazil are increasingly acting as independent actors rather than automatic supporters of the Western-led order. At the 2025 Munich Security Conference, 30% of speakers represented the Global South, a figure that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

          Figure 1. Share of Global GDP (PPP): G7 vs BRICS+, 2000–2024

          Fracturing Alliances and US Foreign Policy

          The second major driver of change is the United States itself.

          The return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 accelerated tensions already present within the Western alliance system.

          Trump’s approach, characterized by tariff escalation, skepticism toward NATO burden-sharing, and unilateral diplomatic maneuvering, strained relations with traditional partners in Europe and Asia. Europe, long dependent on US security guarantees, responded by dramatically increasing defense spending, though analysts note it will remain reliant on American military infrastructure for years to come.

          At the same time, a growing divergence is visible in how different parts of the world perceive the emerging order. Surveys conducted for the Munich Security Report 2025 found that majorities in G7 nations view the shift toward multipolarity with concern, fearing increased disorder and conflict. By contrast, large majorities in China (+50% net agreement), South Africa (+45%), India (+44%), and Brazil (+35%) believe a multipolar world would better address the needs of developing nations. The North-South divide has rarely been so sharply quantified.

          Figure 2. “A Multipolar World Would Be More Peaceful and Fair”, Net Agreement (%) by Country.

          The Dollar, The Military, And the Limits of Decline

          The narrative of American decline is, however, contested by several analysts. Writing in Foreign Affairs in February 2026, analyst C. Raja Mohan argued that “the first year of Trump’s second term has punctured the narrative of American decline and the rise of multipolarity,” pointing to the US ability to intervene militarily, reshape trade rules, and push resolutions through the UN Security Council with limited effective resistance.

          A key pillar of this argument is financial. The US dollar still accounts for approximately 57% of global foreign exchange reserves, according to IMF COFER data, down from a peak of nearly 73% in 2001, but still far ahead of any rival currency. The euro, its closest competitor, holds under 20%. Efforts by BRICS nations to launch an alternative reserve currency or payment system have so far failed to gain traction, with even the BRICS Development Bank continuing to operate primarily in US dollars. Beyond finance, the US continues to dominate the sectors most critical to 21st-century power: artificial intelligence, semiconductor technology, and advanced military systems. Russia, often cited as a pillar of a new multipolar order, has a GDP smaller than that of Italy and a narrow economic base heavily dependent on natural resource exports.

          As the Munich Security Report 2025 concluded with notable precision: “Today’s international system shows elements of unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity, and nonpolarity. What you see depends on where you look.”

          Figure 3. US Dollar Share of Global Foreign Exchange Reserves, 1999–2023

          What Multipolarity Would Mean in Practice

          Regardless of how the academic debate is resolved, the practical consequences of the current transition are already visible. Multilateral institutions are under strain: the WTO’s dispute resolution mechanism remains largely paralyzed, the UN Security Council is increasingly deadlocked, and global supply chains are fragmenting along geopolitical lines, a process known as “friend-shoring”, as nations prioritize strategic alignment over economic efficiency.

          Some analysts see opportunity in this transition. Chatham House researcher Amitav Acharya has argued that a “multiplex” world order could emerge, one characterized by greater ideological diversity, more inclusive global institutions, and stronger regional governance. The inclusion of the African Union in the G20 in 2023 was cited as a potential sign of this more representative direction. The Munich Security Report 2025 cautioned, however, that without shared rules, multipolarization risks producing not a fairer world but a more conflictual one:

          “Before our eyes, we are seeing the negative scenario of a more multipolar world materialize — a more conflictual world without shared rules and effective multilateral cooperation.”

          Conclusion

          The world of 2026 is no longer the world of 1995. While the United States retains unmatched military capability and continues to anchor the global financial system, its ability to set the terms of international order unilaterally has measurably diminished.

          The rise of China and the BRICS bloc, combined with a more assertive Global South and an increasingly transactional US foreign policy, are producing a structural transition whose ultimate destination remains unclear. What is certain is that the rules, institutions, and alliances that defined the post-Cold War era are under revision and the outcome of that revision will shape the next several decades of global politics.

          Sources

          Munich Security Conference, Munich Security Report 2025 C. Raja Mohan, “The Multipolar Delusion,” Foreign Affairs, February 2026 ; Brandon J. Weichert, “The Unipolar Moment Is Over,” The National Interest, December 2025 (nationalinterest.org); Amitav Acharya, “The Decline of the West and the Rise of the Rest,” The World Today, Chatham House, December 2025 (chathamhouse.org); Centre for International Governance Innovation, “America’s Unipolar Moment Is Over” (cigionline.org); MD. Abir Mahmud Jakaria, “Global Power Shift: Is the United States Losing Dominance in the Emerging Multipolar World Order?” ResearchGate, February 2026 (researchgate.net); Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research, “The Rise of Multipolarity: Is the Unipolar World Order Officially Over?” February 2026 (ijllr.com); IMF, World Economic Outlook Database (imf.org); IMF, COFER Database — Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (imf.org); EY India Economic Watch, “Can BRICS Play a Key Role in Shaping Future Global Economic Policy?” 2024 (ey.com); BRICS Brazil Presidency, “BRICS GDP Outperforms Global Average”

          Rebecca Fratello 

          Writer

          Why Property Matters More Than Income 

          Posted on by Leave a comment

          For a long time, inequality was mostly discussed in terms of income, jobs, and education. But in many rich countries today, the real difference is often about who owns property. Two households can earn similar salaries and still have very different futures if one owns a home and the other rents. Housing is no longer just a place to live. It is one of the main ways families build wealth, gain financial security, and pass advantages on to their children. Across OECD countries, wealth is much more unevenly distributed than income, the richest 10% of households own more than half of total household wealth on average, while the bottom half owns very little. 

          Asset Inequality 

          Income shapes what a household can afford today. Wealth shapes what it can survive, invest, and pass on tomorrow. This matters because wealth gives protection against unemployment, illness, rising prices, and economic shocks in a way that income alone often cannot. A household with a modest salary but a fully paid home may be much more secure than a household with the same salary, no assets, and high rent. Research on OECD shows that wealth inequality is greater than income inequality, and that housing makes up a large part of household wealth, especially for people outside the extremely richest groups. 

          Housing is important because it is both something people need and something that can make them wealthier. Everyone needs a place to live, but people who own a home can slowly build value with it, benefit if house prices go up, and sometimes use it to borrow money. This gives housing a big effect on people’s financial security and future opportunities. That is why housing does not just show inequality but can also make it worse. 

          Homeownership Creates Advantage 

          Owning a home creates advantages in several ways. First, mortgage payments can gradually turn monthly housing costs into ownership. Rent, by contrast, pays for shelter but does not create an asset. Second, homeowners may benefit if the value of their property rises over time. Third, owning a home often brings more stability, since owners are usually less exposed to sudden rent increases or be forced to leave their home. Finally, housing wealth can later help pay for education, retirement, or children’s future home purchases. 

          This means the gap between owners and renters increasingly looks like a class divide. Owners can build wealth while meeting a basic need. Renters usually cannot. Over time, that difference grows. A family that buys early may spend years building equity. A family that rents for the same period may face rising housing costs without gaining any asset in return. In this way, housing turns inequality from a matter of monthly income into a matter of long-term ownership. 

          Why Buying A Home Is Getting Harder 

          This would matter less if everyone had a fair chance to buy a home. But entering the housing market has become more difficult, especially for young people. House prices have risen sharply in many places. Down payments are harder to save for. Credit rules are often stricter. And high rents make saving even harder. Eurostat data shows that in some EU countries, young people spend a very large share of their income on housing.  

          This matters because high rent does not only create pressure in the present, but it also reduces the ability to save for the future. The result is a cycle, those who already own homes benefit when prices rise and those who do not own face a higher barrier to entry every year. In this sense, the housing market often rewards those who are already inside it while making it harder for outsiders to enter. 

          Figure 2 – Housing cost overburden by age group 

          Inherited Wealth 

          This is where the issue becomes generational. When homes become so expensive that wages alone are not enough to buy one, family wealth starts to matter much more. Parents may help with a down payment, give property directly, or leave an inheritance that makes homeownership possible. In that kind of system, access to property depends less on current income and more on whether someone’s family already owns assets. 

          OECD evidence suggests this is not a small issue. In several European countries, a significant share of low-income homeowners got their homes through inheritance or gifts rather than through purchase alone. OECD research on inheritance also shows that wealth transfers tend to increase inequality, because the people who receive inheritance are often already better off.  

          This does not mean income no longer matters. Salaries still affect daily life, access to credit, and the ability to pay a mortgage but income alone matters less when wealth already gives some people a head start. A good salary helps, but it may still not be enough to buy a home without family support. At the same time, a household with inherited property may enjoy more security and wealth growth than a renter with a higher income.  

          The Political and Social Effects 

          When property matters more than income, the effects go beyond money. Homeownership can shape access to better neighborhoods, better schools, more stability, and greater security in old age. It also affects politics. Existing homeowners often benefit from rising house prices and may oppose reforms that would lower them, even if those reforms would help younger or poorer households. 

          This helps explain why housing policy is so difficult. Building more homes, changing zoning laws, expanding social housing, or taxing property more effectively could improve access for people outside the market. But these policies may conflict with the interests of people who already own property. As the World Bank has noted, housing affordability is not only a social issue, but it can also reduce labor mobility and stop young people from moving to places where the best jobs are. 

          Figure 3 – OECD countries have ample room to shift the tax burden towards property taxes 

          Conclusion 

          The class division today is not just between people with high salaries and people with low salaries. More often, it is between people who own property and people who do not. Housing is the clearest example, because owning a home can give families more than shelter, it can give them wealth, stability, and something to pass on to their children. As buying a home becomes harder, and more dependent on family support, inequality becomes more deeply rooted across generations. If this trend continues, what matters most may not be who earns the most, but who already owns something valuable. 

          Sources:

          Margarida Ferreira

          Writer