Outside In | 2025 was the year of denial. What now?
Despite the threat of wars, tariffs, climate change and AI, normality has persisted. But it can only be a matter of time before such contradictions explode
As an undergraduate student of anthropology long ago, I remember studying the phenomenon of “compartmentalism” as a hallmark of primitive cultures or societies – their capacity to hold contradictory beliefs without inner conflict or even appearing to notice the contradictions.
We well-educated rationalists in the rich West were supposed to be above this kind of schizophrenic inconsistency, seen as a symptom of a defective imagination or the shallowness of the masses.
Think of street hawkers in Hanoi cheerfully selling to US tourists the dog tags of American soldiers killed in the Vietnam war, the murderous mafia boss who goes home every evening as a loving husband and father, or the Christian scientist who believes the world was created in seven days.
But the past year has provided extensive proof that everyone is vulnerable to compartmentalism. How otherwise could so many have faced the multiple crises and tragedies, and still remained optimistic and cheerful? How otherwise could so many well-educated policymakers have pursued policies that are not only unsustainable but inflict widespread harm?
The reminder of compartmentalism came from the Financial Times’ Janan Ganesh, who asked what could explain “the persistence of normality in the darkest global context in most of our lifetimes”. His answer was simple and persuasive: compartmentalism, not as a sign of mental feebleness, but as a necessary survival skill when so much is going badly and is beyond our control.