We are in times of great change, politically, economically, and morally. From the lens of a western standpoint, freedoms that people have been striving for over centuries feel like they are being threatened. This lessening of freedom is a worrying side-effect of a move towards right-wing politics that has been several years in the making.

In Britain, we saw the Brexit vote come into force. It was meant to create a feeling of “sovereignty” but it was tainted with narrow-mindedness and nationalism. Some Brexit voters were strategists but most of them were led by patriotism without logic.

Rabindrnath Tagore was a gifted poet who wrote the Indian national anthem which decribes the landscapes of different parts of India in lyrical detail, yet despite being so emotively patriotic he said, “I will never let patriotism overtake my humanity.” He understood that a nation is just an idea, and should not be based on arrogance or exclusion. But even in India, a large democracy, the government recently brought in laws to create greater exclusivity for citizenship. While India and Britain were becoming more closed, Trump was leading America to close its borders as much as possible, bringing in an administration which would later, under a different President, limit the freedoms of women through an over-turning of abortion rights.

At the same time, conflict has continued to rage in parts of the middle east, and confict reached Europe this year with historians predicting there is a risk of global warfare. If this wasn’t enough, fuel is becoming harder to source and energy prices are rocketing. The world has divided itself into two camps — those who are trying to alert others to the concerning pattern of right wing policies, the dangers of these governments and their environmental neglect, and those who think going backwards to a more exclusive time is the best way to go forward.

Now is the time to put aside weapons and have a compassionate dialogue. If we do not want to house and shelter refugees, we need to stop creating them through unnecessary warfare. If we want clean air and sustainable energy, we need to prioritise policies that help with this. If we want to have freedom and tolerance, we need to stop voting for leaders that represent the opposite. Will times like these help us learn to hate, or to love again?