Amidst cruelty and chaos, a world that’s on her way

Happy New Year, everyone. This week, starting January 29^th, marks the beginning of the Lunar New Year. This is the year of the Wood Snake. Here’s a great visual guide on what that means and what your fortune for 2025 will be, according to your own zodiac sign.

Since it is the Year of the Wood Snake, I think about the significance of this animal. The snake is often associated with evil, cunning trickery, and ruthlessness: hypnotizing people, envenomating them, persuading the naive into…eating fruit, and so on.

But in some cultures, they can be symbols of good fortune, fertility, transformation, and renewal. The Egyptian icon the ouroboros, for example, depicts a snake eating its own tail, symbolizing the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth. Snakes often shed their skin, leaving them behind.

I’m thinking about all this because like most of you, I’ve aged an entire year since last week, thanks to the breathtaking onslaught of racism, transphobia, ignorance, and general cruelty coming from those who are now in charge, led by an adjudicated rapist and conman, flanked by Nazis.

I am filled with fear and grief for the people whose lives have been or will be torn apart, dread for the years ahead, and preemptive exhaustion brought on thoughts of the horrors and battles we will be facing every day.

However, I am also fired up and determined to fight. And I see the same resolve in so many of you. We will continue to work for a just and equitable world. We will continue to help and protect people and communities. We will not be deterred.

Going on a walk the other day to clear my head, I saw someone had written this quote by writer and activist Arundhati Roy:

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I have always loved that quote, and it was a good reminder to see it again. I have more appreciation for Arundhati Roy’s hopeful vision, not just because of the chaos and destruction we’re facing, but also because of her courage in standing up for Palestine. In her unapologetic speech accepting the PEN Pinter Prize, she condemns the collective imagination that would condone and fund lsrael’s genocidal campaign (which it still wages—as it has for over 75 years—despite the recent ceasefire):

“An imagination that cannot countenance diversity, cannot countenance the idea of living in a country alongside other people, equally, with equal rights. Like everybody else in the world does. An imagination that cannot afford to acknowledge that Palestinians want to be free, like South Africa is, like India is, like all countries that have thrown off the yoke of colonialism are.”

I think about the pushback against DEI, against trans people’s existence, against immigrants, against the poor. All of it stems from this narrow, sad imagination of greedy, cowardly people.

But we must not lose hope. If Roy, with her level of moral clarity and courage, believes a better world is “on her way,” then we should believe her. In an earlier speech, she wrote:

“The most bewildering conundrum of our times is that all over the world people seem to be voting to disempower themselves. They do this based on the information they receive […] But eventually I believe that people cannot and will not be controlled. I believe that a new generation will rise in revolt. There will be a revolution. Sorry, let me rephrase that. There will be revolutions. Plural.”

Recently, I read this piece on the “Gramsci Gap,” by Venkatesh Rao, who elaborates on the quote by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian philosopher. Gramsci’s words have been translated as “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” Rao created this helpful chart below to illustrate this concept.

It seems we are firmly in that gap right now, a “time of monsters,” as the old world dies and a new world fights to emerge into existence.

In many ways, our society may be like a snake shedding its old skin—the yoke of colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism. What we are seeing is the resistance to this evolution as white nationalists and misogynists start to reckon with the fact that they will soon be outnumbered, oligarchs start to realize their time is nearing its end. They will fight desperately to preserve the old order and hierarchy where they have been on top, and they will burn systems and structures and communities to the ground, like a snake eating its own tail.

But remember, a snake eating its own tail, that’s an ouroboros, the symbol of the cycle of destruction and rebirth. We are in the destruction phase, marked by the prevalence of monsters, ones fueled by bigotry and ignorance and lack of imagination.

Though it may not seem like it now, this period of destruction will be followed by a period of renewal and growth, and a world many of us write about in our vision statements. It may take a while, and I have no illusions it will be easy; many will not live to see this through.

Let us not, though, be overwhelmed. Let’s breathe and rest and lean on one another. We must stay steady. Our job is to keep fighting hate and cruelty, to keep advancing love and kindness, to keep protecting the people and communities we care about, and to keep nurturing a hopeful vision for humanity.

This is how we will defeat the monsters and pave the way for the arrival of this new world, a more just and equitable one, a world that’s just as excited to get here as we are for her to arrive.