Welcome to the Age of Disruption and Feelings

We have entered an era of uncomfortable geopolitics. The world order that once promised stability is unravelling. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza, coups in Africa and intensifying US-China rivalry have shaken us.

Power is shifting, alliances are fluid and artificial intelligence technology magnifies uncertainty.

This disruption reaches far beyond governments. It touches ordinary lives through prices, jobs and the constant churn of online outrage. The result is a global unease that blurs the line between politics and emotion.

At the same time, something else is happening: the rise of feelings as a social force. Young people everywhere are speaking more openly about anxiety, fatigue and the search for meaning.

The generation that grew up online can track every trend and “glocal” twist in real time. They feel their world – its turbulences big and small.

This is the Age of Disruption and of Feelings. One shakes the outside world; the other stirs the inner one. Together, they define the tension of our time.

For much of the last three decades, globalisation created the illusion of steady progress. Trade expanded, poverty fell and a growing middle class believed tomorrow would be better.

That optimism has faded. The post-Cold War order is giving way to an uncomfortably changing world where competition replaces consensus and no one knows who or what will win.

Conflicts and rivalries are not confined to battlefields. They reach into living rooms, classrooms and board rooms.

Sanctions, tariffs, visas and the weaponisation of technology and the US dollar have made people aware that geopolitics isn’t distant, as it shapes the price of food, the security of jobs and the tone of public debate.

Technology intensifies this effect. Social media brings every crisis to our screens, collapsing distance and time. The emotional contagion of the digital age makes politics visceral. 

I belong to a generation raised on duty and survival. In Asia’s rapidly developing economies of the past era, no one asked how you felt. The task was to work hard, provide for your family and rise from poverty.

The new generation is different. Having inherited relative comfort, they are less concerned with survival and more with meaning. They value authenticity and emotional balance. They question institutions that demand conformity without offering purpose.

Two young people I know illustrate this shift. One completed medical school but chose not to practise medicine. Another became a lawyer only to open a bar serving drinks and providing an atmosphere for conversation. Parents are worried about their children’s choices.

Many young people no longer measure success in income or titles. They want coherence between who they are and what they do. Some pursue art, design, farming, cooking or social innovation. Others opt for smaller lives that feel larger in spirit. Far from laziness, this is an act of self-preservation in a messy world.

As a professor, I see this shift up close. Students arrive well-informed yet emotionally anxious. They follow trends and disasters on their phones while worrying about their future. They crave clarity and belonging, but our education systems still train them for a world that seems to be disappearing, or push STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) without including the humanities.

We continue to teach as if success means mastering information and competing for grades. But the challenges ahead, from climate change to digital ethics, require emotional intelligence, empathy and the ability to work across disciplines, economies and cultures.

If this is truly an age of feeling, education must adapt. We must teach not only how to think but also how to feel with responsibility – helping students understand their emotions, engage with differences and stay grounded in ambiguity.

Rigour still matters, but it should be rigour that embraces complexity, not one that hides from it. Understanding geopolitics today requires not just statistics and strategy but an appreciation of history, fear, resentment and hope – the very forces that push us.

Classrooms should be places where intellect and empathy meet. The future belongs not to those who feel nothing, but to those who can turn feeling into insight.

When global instability meets private unease, societies need release. Some find it in protest and activism; others in retreat, such as the “lying flat” movement, the return to crafts and agriculture, the global search for simpler lives.

Both are responses to the same stress: a world that overwhelms. Political disruption without emotional grounding breeds burnout. Emotional sensitivity without civic purpose risks drifting into despair. The challenge is to make feeling a source of connection, not escape.

This tension between disruption and feeling will define the coming decades. The task of this generation is to reconcile toughness with tenderness, to build societies that value empathy as much as efficiency.

The young doctor who refuses to practise and the lawyer who runs a bar may seem to be walking away from duty. But maybe they are walking towards something the rest of us have forgotten: the need to live truthfully.

Feeling deeply is not a weakness. It is a new form of awareness, one that could guide us through the fractures of this century. If we can learn to align the mind that thinks with the heart that feels, the age of disruption may yet become an age of renewal.

Contributed by Prof. Christine Loh. The article was published on SCMP:  

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/hong-kong-opinion/article/3332549/welcome-age-disruption-and-feelings