Happy New Year! 2026 beckons.
Hard to believe it’s that time again. The holiday season is drawing to a close. One more week and then it’s time to tighten the belt and get on with the new year.
At 67, my New Year’s celebrations are getting a little less rowdy and late. When I was young, I wouldn’t even dream about not staying up until midnight to watch the new year roll in. Now it’s a bit less exciting.
I’m reminded of my old dog Aspen, a white whippet, may he rest in peace. When he was young, I would throw a dog frisbee and he would run like the wind, leap in the air and catch it. But when he was old, I would throw the frisbee and he would just stand there and look at me like, “really?”
It’s sort of the same thing with my resolutions. “Really?” Same old same old. Lose weight. Drink less. Be nicer. Exercise. Read the Bible. Most of us are trying to improve every day in one way or another.
The year 2026 stands on the cusp of an interesting period of time with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Most pundits say this will usher in profound changes in our economy and society.
I use AI a lot and it’s impressive. Things are going to change. I’ve always said that not only is change ongoing but the rate of change is increasing. Bigger changes are coming faster.
Can we adapt? Rapid technological changes cause rapid economic change which causes cultural and societal changes. Human beings weren’t designed for this. We originally evolved in an environment in which very little changed.
Fortunately, the human mind has plasticity as a hallmark. That means the brain can change and adapt to changing situations. But how much?
The industrial revolution put huge stress on society, leading to world wars, the rise of communism and fascism. Tens of millions died in the upheaval.
The industrial revolution affected rural areas, causing massive dislocation from farming to manufacturing. The AI revolution is going to affect the white-collar workers of the middle class. This could portend even greater social stress as the middle class is the backbone of our civil society.
This will stress our political institutions to the max. Let’s hope we manage better than our transition from an agrarian to an industrial society.
It’s quite likely that AI will be able to do many white-collar tasks quicker and cheaper. A recent Wall Street Journal column predicted the entire advertising industry would be consolidated by a handful of Big Tech companies. There’s already a top country western hit that was produced by AI.
It seems like yesterday I was writing about NAFTA moving American jobs to Mexico. Dozens of textile plants in Mississippi were closing down and relocating south of the border. There was fear this would lead to massive unemployment.
This was in the early 1990s. I wrote that the textile factory jobs would be replaced by better, higher paying jobs. And they were relatively quickly.
Our fear of Mexicans taking our jobs was quickly made obsolete by China. The next 20 years were dominated by the rise of China from an impoverished Third World country to an industrial superpower.
It is truly amazing that the founding fathers of this country could design a constitution that held up through 238 years of massive change. That bodes well for its continued success. And, of course, the religious faith of Americans over the centuries has been likewise foundational to our survival and prosperity.
What will the future hold? A world of smart slave robots catering to our every command? It’s hard not to imagine this leading to greater prosperity for the average person.
Like always, the distribution of income and wealth in our society will be a pivotal political issue. Our country has always tried to balance the need to incentivize entrepreneurs and wealth creators with fairness and civil stability. The future will be no different. I can see a guaranteed national income becoming a fact of life.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to maximize my interactions with friends, family and colleagues. I recently tested out a longevity app. There were dozens of questions about how many friends I have and my social interactions. Apparently, healthy human interactions are key factors in longevity.
The great commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God, to me, includes loving his creation, the world in which you live, which means bitterness must give way to joy.
Why is joy so elusive? Because of our sin: our greed, our gluttony, our ambition and other desires. Young children, with far less time to nurture and grow their sins, seem to find joy effortlessly. Not so many adults.
Loving your neighbor as yourself is quite a simple concept but impossible to achieve, which is why escaping sin is impossible on this side of eternity. But we can try to understand that we are but one in a world of billions and all our fates are equally significant.
All of this falls under my other New Year’s Resolutions, which is to begin to understand how to grow old gracefully. I held up my arms the other day and noticed innumerable lines of wrinkled, sagging skin. And so the final decades begin. There have been so many shining examples of elderly people in my life who exhibited grace, humor, faith and good cheer to the very end. In their honor, I resolve to emulate them.
My third resolution is to trust God and quit trying so hard to do it all myself. I have slowly learned over my life that the harder I force the issue, the more it blows up in my face. Why is that? Because it’s not my world and I’m not God. Tough medicine for a control freak to swallow, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
Trust and obey. There’s no other way, as the hymn goes. No truer words were spoken. Life is a gift from God. He knows the way. We’re his creation and he loves and cares for us. As my dear friend Bob likes to say, “We’re not driving.”
It’s going to be an exciting year, 2026. There will be many ups and downs. But no matter what, let’s keep on truckin’!
