The year to come
My main resolution for 2026 is to continue to advance the three projects I had set out for myself in 2024: writing, language, and saving the world. So what is called for now is a progress report.
But first, an explanation.
1) “Saving the world” in the face of wars and genocide, rapid climate change and the disasters accompanying it (flooding, firestorms, drought and hurricanes among them); the dangers impending from the revolution in communications technology — so-called “artificial intelligence”, sattelites, spying, etc.; the increasing inequalities between social classes, nations, people’s and sexes, current and likely future pandemics, and other unexpected but probable crises— is clearly a project too big for one man, even if he’s named Trump or Putin. And neither of them has the will or patience to even bother about such mammoth problems. Saving the world will have to be a collective project, or many such projects, involving great numbers of people, and I want to be one of them.
2) Writing: What I, a man of a certain age (currently 84), education, and modest writing and analytical skills, can offer is just this: examples and suggestions of struggle and how to resist. Thus I am now writing a novel about some of the men and women confronting the previous global crisis that threatened to destroy all civilization, Germans who resisted fascism: their sometimes confused revolutionary ideals, their alliances that were often necessary but always precarious, their life-motivating aspirations, terrible and disheartening defeats but also certain important and exemplary victories.
3) Language learning: Writing this novel is a big personal challenge, requiring not only research on historical events I was familiar with only superficially but requiring also acquisition of a new language skill. I’m pleased to report that my reading and speaking knowledge of German has greatly improved this past year, thanks mainly to Duolingo and also my habit of memorizing verse. So far, examples from Rilke, Horst Bienek and Bertolt Brecht.