Last week I shared A Vision For The Future. This week I want to reflect on the crazy year we just lived through. If you don’t consider yourself a Stoic by the end of this list, you might want to investigate this Greek philosophy further.

— Getting through the third year of a pandemic, we learned that everyone, including Anthoney Fauci, essentially lied to us. The mental and financial damage done to the next generation is enormous.

— Generation Z members, born between 1997 and 2012, have “a high degree of anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicide and fragility.” The damage caused by social media, and what City Club member Oak Thorne calls “nature deficit disorder,” has caused this generation to valorize victimhood.

— The nation now suffers from massive inflation, far from “transitory,” due to an economic system flooded with cash purportedly to address the pandemic lockdowns.

— The Stock Market’s 2021 rise of ~27% once again convinced many that this time it’s different and that markets would rise forever. Wrong again!

— Speaking as an immigrant myself, I’d be the first to admit our immigration policy in general, and our Southern border in particular is a disaster. We must secure our borders and staple a green card to every college diploma earned by a foreign student.

— Sam Bankman-Fried proved Warren Buffett right again: Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s swimming naked. Like the California gold rush of the 19th century, Blockchain is real and full of danger.

— Watching every Trump-backed candidate lose, Republican primary voters ensured that 2022 does not mark “the end of Democracy as we know it.”

— By pouring fuel on inflationary fires, Congress approved a $1.7 Trillion budget that had something in it for everyone, leaving it up to our children and grandchildren to pay the bill.

— Czar-wannabe Vladimir Putin drank too much of his own kool-aide with his attack on Ukraine and was shocked to watch a comedian-turned-President rally the Western World in his support. Might make right until David meets Goliath to find that power defeats force.

— Europe neither froze nor faced economic collapse after Russia cut off its energy supply. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy or Texas, will be the one paying the price.

— With Russia, Iran, and China officially in the same camp, Biden’s delusional Iran Nuclear Deal finally died. So now Russia gets to help Iran go nuclear in exchange for Iran’s support of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at which time Israel will likely bomb Iran unless the Iranian women first force the implosion of the entire system. It’s all very complicated!

We could go on and on about how bad things are, or, by taking the advice of Steve Jobs,  strive to make a small dent in the universe ourselves.

— Sina.