Click refresh: 22 key events for 2022
From economy, currency and policy tremors to great achievements in sports—a lot went down in 2022. Our year-ender issue sheds light on the key events of the year and what's to come next
Does the passage of 365 days change anything? Do situations and environments change—for good or bad—in a New Year? Do we achieve what we resolve to change or improve when the old calendar makes way for the new?
The answers for most of us would be a “not necessarily”, if not a resounding “no”. Why then do we make a song and dance at the end of every year and hopefully, and riotously, usher in the new?
There is usually a justification for collective human behaviour; that it happens en masse doesn’t mean it is rational behaviour, but it is often explainable.
The Chinese New Year—to be celebrated three weeks after the January 1, 2023 morning of incoherence and vacuity—can help explain the curious combination of tradition and psychology at play. It involves (less of) myth and (more of) pragmatism: After a year of toil in the fields, a period of rest and relaxation was prudent for farmers ahead of the spring season. And there is also the legend that the Chinese used fireworks to scare away a beast that attacked their children. That tradition of burning firecrackers continues.
As does the sense of relief that one has survived the beast yet another year. The Covid-19 monster magnified that sentiment—amid severe illness, death and financial destruction were those who lived to tell the tale. And when survival was no more at stake—now that the virus seems to have lost its sting—came the time to make up for lost time. Say hello to consumerism with a renewed gusto. Or you could even call it the revenge of the living and the loaded.
