Manners Maketh Man
The tear 2024 is bowing down in a few days. A reverence that will stay etched in our history books as the end of an imbroglio that we have lived through, somehow. The world has been through a lot this year, it’s been through war, through the Olympics, it has seen fire, floods, droughts and everything in between. It has also become home to 134 million people. Its magnetic North Pole has shifted by another 55km and its sea levels have risen, yet by another record 3.6mm. Big numbers, those look to be!
Transitioning between different steps in academia, I took this year as one geared towards learning the lessons that the world would impart on me. An irrevocable deed that has shown me perspective, wisdom and cruelty. It is bound to be a bittersweet acitvity, to dive into the abysses of our world and to uncover its secrets.
Humanity is not very famous for its righteousness. As I get older, I notice myself becoming more susceptible to inherited social ills as old as time. We have seen a lot of them this year. Lives were taken, and when they were not taken, they were quite simply destroyed and left as shallow, ephemeral mushes. North of 46,000 people have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, and tens of thousands more were killed in the Ukraine war. Conflict casualties in Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Myanmar and Sahel have also added up to that infamous list, but global data is incomplete about them - not important enough to break the first page, perhaps.
We have seen inaction after cry for helps and action where it was never asked for. We continue to read about more and more sexual assaults on women, rapes and mutilations happening everyday. We read about them. We have mastered this craft… we read about them, simply and only. Men continue to ground themselves in introversion and silence, while children still have to suffer from the activities of pop-up meth labs and Heroine dealings in burrows around the world.
Manners Maketh Man has been a quote tagged in Kingsman films for a few years now. This instruction of respect, of love for others, of peaceful talks and actions has been ungraciously disobeyed by millions, if not bilions, in 2024. We have seen barbarianism, we have seen justice failing to consider the truth, we have been money closing mouths shut, we have seen power, elitism and nepotism place yet another stone at the top of their ever-growing mountain.
Most people’s last souvenir of 2024 will be the Disc de l’Année for that year and the meal they shared with their family on Christmas Eve and on New Year’s. I believe that 2024 deserves more than that. This was the year we started paying double for a carton of milk, and where Elon Musk sent another few hundreds of satellites into low earth orbit.
2024 is the year where a lot happened, but nothing changed.
2024 is now embedded into our memories.
2024 is gone.
