Category: society

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All the lonely people

This line of a song by “The Beatles” dates back to 1966. “Ah, look at all the lonely people” is a kind of puzzled outcry to reckon with the loneliness even in busy and charitable places. 60 years later in 2026 we have whole ministries in some countries to deal with loneliness. It is not a niche problem. Tackling the problem needs to go beyond raising awareness. Loneliness occurs at all stages of the life course: children, adolescents, young adult, migrants, employees, single parents, care giving people, even within couples, seniors and very old persons. It is not restricted to urban or rural areas, but changes from one to another phase in a person’s life course carry the risk to encounter loneliness. It may well be only a temporary phase before new relationships can be established or previous contacts revived. There is a role to reach out to people who might be lonely for all of us. Public policies should be scrutinised on all levels whether they manage to break barriers or raise new ones for persons to feel lonely. In Berlin, the local level in each district is taking measures to facilitate informal meeting points open to all ages and walks of life. The “Wüstenrot foundation” sponsors many initiatives where public policies are short of funds. Projects enhance networks of people and organisations eager to assist “all these lonely people”, wherever they all come from.  (Image: Conference on loneliness at Berlin city hall Schöneberg 2026)

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Cool shelters

In many big cities the metro lines and particularly some of the stations can provide cool shelters during hot days. Reducing the speed of traffic reduces the airflow and heat of acceleration and braking. More home office work if employees have adequate cooling at home reduces emissions additionally. The historic Kreuzberg-Metro-Station, nowadays called “Platz der Luftbrücke” is big enough to accommodate many people who are in need of shelter for whatever purpose. Underground you do not even hear much from the busy traffic above. More efforts to brighten up the station could create an urban space which invites to rest in hot days rather than rush around the city. Climate change will ask us to come up with many innovative and unorthodox solutions as part of public health initiatives.

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The next big challenge in medicine and public health seems to be the multiple long-term conditions. Many people do not suffer from just one medical condition, but several ones at the same time. Diabetes is one such condition which frequently comes along in combination with other conditions. The definition of Multiple long-term conditions comprises 2 and more conditions like cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory or cancer, to name just a few of the more common ones. Our health and care systems are little prepared for adequate treatments as this involves a coordinated intervention and poly-pharmaceutical therapy. Changes in a single condition have repercussions in the condition and treatment. This makes adequate treatment a resourceful process with limited knowledge about the multiple interactions and intervening parameters. Add, for example, depression to any of the above mentioned conditions and the behavioral assumptions of correctly taking prescribed medication becomes a major issue for patients. The challenge for aging societies and societies with more people suffering from early onset of obesity and diabetes increases in the coming decades. There are several teams that address these challenges in research which gives hope to all those suffering already from Multiple long-term conditions.

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Long run

The future orientation is a principal component of any investment. If a society stops investing its impeding its own ability to adapt and grow. Investment costs today will likely generate returns in the medium or long run. A caveat applies. Some investments may cause long running liabilities, like nuclear energy. The choice of which investment to choose, therefore, is crucial. The investment in people is likely to have a positive return in the long run because it remains an investment that has a high potential to adapt to changing circumstances rapidly. Training as scientist allows to do both fundamental research or to choose an applied field with little reorientation. A focus on the long run has advantages of likely stable returns if previous forecasts in what to invest were correct and reliable. This is the point where besides the difficulty to make good (technological) choices, probabilities enter the equation. The longer the time horizon, the greater the probability that relevant changes, which impact the future returns, shall occur. At best, some of these may cancel out each other in the long run. The potential that some risks are “too big to fail” does not mean that shall not occur (zero probability does not exist in technical nor human decisions. A sound theory of social investment would be a great step ahead for humanity in the 21st century. (Image: Ostend street art 2026-6) 

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École buissonnière

In 2026 the “École buissonnière“, the outdoor schooling has become a viable alternative to the schools that are overly hot during summer. But far beyond being an alternative out of necessity, schools as well as kindergardens adopt a form of schooling close to and in nature. It can be so much more than a simple interlude or excursion. Learning from nature is a precursor of bionics as well as compassion. After all nature offers ample examples of diversity and coping mechanisms. It is an option not only for learning purposes restricted to the young, but it is underexploited in continuous learning and lifewide experiences as well. There have been abuses also in history, most notably by Nazis in Germany for purposes of indoctrination. The learning opportunities to encourage a critical perspective of our modern, technology- and screen-dominated learning and life, are huge. They just need experienced guidance on the way of discovery, comparisons and collective experiences. Children open up and have fun, the more the pressure of classrooms is alleviated.  Learning about the importance of biodiversity from different angles is a very human value and includes our responsibility for other species.

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Internet pain or gain

Billions of people are forced to lose time when clicking through webpages. Instead of the default  to deny cookies, we are forced to “opt out” in most instances to a collection of random data-hungry, largely in-transparent and more or less risky cookies. It could be simple. It just needs a consensus to make the no-cookies rule the default. By such a simple measure the open information part of the internet is strengthened again. All for pay or “pay-with-your-data” offers on the internet would have to make you to confirm your “opt in”, thereby alleviating the burden for search of information. Huge corporate interests that rely on advertising profiles are, of course, an obstacle to such changes, but search engines of the internet would gain importance again before generative AI and AI-agents shall make own search and clicking on cookies denial a different routine again. For the time being we keep wasting our precious time to deny cookies. Just changing the default shall bring back a better internet and the focus on ease of access, diversity of information and better privacy. Make the internet fun again! Choose your browser consciously as well. 

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Gardening culture

There is a specific set of skills attached to gardening culture. You do not have to travel continents to experience the pleasure of gardening from more than just your own culture. Beyond the tradition of the French garden “à la Le Nôtre”, the English garden including the short precisely trimmed lawn and blooming arrangements, the Japanese gardens have a wholistic approach, which pay attention to broader human experiences of nature. A garden is a kind of sanctuary. It resembles more an internal journey rather than a showing off to others. Walls serve to enhance privacy to be able to open-up again later to others rather than a symbol of distinction and exclusion from the less privileged. Small places suffice to give room to a Bonsai experience. The very busy seaside resorts and port of Ostend on the Belgian coast has reserved a small spot for inner peace in its Japanese garden. (Image: Japanese garden “Shin Kai Tei” in Ostend created by Takahashi Sawano) 

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Autonomous Agents

We all have seen more or less autonomous robots somewhere, maybe in a garden silently doing its job or doing more demanding tasks like in playing table tennis against a human. Even the evolution of polluting fireworks to swarms of little light-emitting drones designing figures on the sky have become quite popular. The AI-world is similarly advancing rapidly and proposes more and more “autonomous agents” to assist us. It seems crucial to distinguish the 2 Ds of autonomous agents: Degrees and Dimensions. As with job quality or job satisfaction, there are several sub-dimensions, which need to be considered when dealing, in a summarizing form, with such encompassing terms.
You might allow an agent to order missing food for a meal and pay for this autonomously. You might even be assisted in financial choices to a large degree, but you might not want an autonomous agent to make far reaching decisions concerning your health or partnership(s). Besides such dimensions, the degree of autonomous decision-making needs to be calibrated according to your (perhaps changing) preferences. Booking a table in a restaurant, with a single other person, might not just be a friendly, nice assistance, but it might get you into severe trouble. However, managing conference bookings, a family event or a birthday party might allow you to concentrate on other issues or specific details. Additionally, there are underlying and cross-cutting topics like trust, risks and security that enter the “2 Ds of autonomous agents”. A 2-dimensional matrix plotting levels across dimensions might work as a behavioral guideline in the development of autonomous agents. More dimensions may be added during the implementation.

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Autonomy in Behavior

The learning capacity of humans sets them on a path to acquire and extend their autonomy in behavior. At birth, physical and emotional dependence is highest. Soon learning to handle different nutrition sources and emotional stress allows to gain more autonomy in each of these components of autonomy. Throughout later childhood and adolescence we develop various additional domains as well as degrees of autonomy.
Role-playing, enhanced motor control and interaction with others define and redefine continuously the potentials and limits of autonomous behavior. Social norms start to play an even more important role as of adulthood, just consider financial autonomy as one of the dimensions. The most distinguishing factor from robots or animals until 2026 has been the human ability to form its own autonomous judgment, where value systems and legal norms co-determine or set limits to our autonomy or behavior. Some results from neuroscience have demonstrated that our readiness to act is prefigured in our brain and additional “intelligent” mechanisms are needed to suppress or guide the otherwise autonomous, spontaneous action or reaction.
Our “free will” might not be as free as we wish it to be. Similarly our autonomy in behavior or decision-making might not be as autonomous as we tend to believe. (Image: Social cooperative gardening project, Brussels 2026-6)

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Autonomy in literature

As we might imagine, autonomy has been and is a huge topic in literature. From the foundations of democracy to the autonomous state building, historical accounts are full of treaties on autonomy. Literature has taken similar steps by asking can we really be autonomous in our decision-making as we are social beings embedded into varieties of Throne, families and networks. There are ever larger parts that we are conscious about, but the realm of unconsciousness or sleep remains substantial. Maybe in literature, the author Samuel Beckett has gone furthest in dealing with human autonomy in his writings. The search for autonomous action might lead to far-reaching inactivity in “Waiting for Godot”.
However, Beckett’s view about autonomy can also be interpreted as a continuous battle of mankind as demonstrated in the often cited expression by Beckett (“Worstward Ho”, 1983, p.7) “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Our strive for autonomy remains a lifelong struggle. The path to more autonomy is not linear over the life course. In fact, much evidence from gerontologists suggests that it might follow an inverse U-shape, being low at birth and low before death. Literature has guided us in such questions just as much as religious, philosophical, legal and social concerns enter into the underlying concept of autonomy and autonomous decision-making across the life course.