Amid violence, war and deepening polarisation, 2025 has shown that despair and passivity are choices too – and that human survival depends on rejecting dehumanisation in all its forms.

2025 has been a year of public horrors, those created by human beings dramatically worse than those Mother Nature has wrought (some “natural disasters” undoubtedly also caused by human greed, wilful ignorance, and the escalation of “entitlement” to pathological levels).

However – and in the complex world of human affairs there can always be an “however” – this year has also shown that simply hand wringing over tragedies is not an adequate response.

Nor is it enough to assume that all power lies with the powerful. Or that your efforts and mine are without consequence. That, after all, is precisely what subdued, compliant citizens are intended to feel. Yet so many events, not least the unutterable horror of 14 December in Bondi, demonstrate that the actions of individuals – for worse and for far, far better – inarguably have consequences. Your actions. And mine.

This year is not yet at an end. As a committed anti-war, anti-violent activist throughout my adolescence and long adult life, it has been a year in which the green shoots of optimism have struggled to survive. How is it possible, I’ve asked myself, that so many among us are locked into a way of thinking so incurably partisan or binary that it is possible to see only some lives as worth valuing and protecting, and other lives as disposable?

How, too, is it possible that a quarter of the way through the 21st-century the shadow of religion could be so dark it can be used to accelerate fanatical ideological goals that were thoroughly exposed almost a century ago? The vile, ugly history of antisemitism stretches back almost 2000 grim years. The history of brutal tribalism and conquest goes back much further. But now?

Well before the most recent betrayals of our shared need for peace and co-operation by governments, public institutions and legacy media, I wrote in my book, _Seeking the Sacred: Transforming Our View of Ourselves and One Another_, that “Our world has never been as crowded. Our weapons have never been as dangerous. Our hatreds and prejudices are literally unaffordable. Yet, in so many spheres, our spiritual ignorance goes unchallenged.”

More pointedly still, I wrote (and believe), “…it’s safe to assume that you see and interpret an infinitely more complex world then the one your ancestors experienced. Never before have our choices being as extreme or diverse – and sometimes confusing. Never before have our personal choices had such impact on the world around us.”

Those of us who care are the undeniable majority. Neither “goodness” nor “evil” belong exclusively to any single group, culture, race, gender. How could they? Nor do exclusive claims to “truth” or “supremacy” have legitimacy in a world where the lessons of interdependence are all that will save us. And the planet.

Religion and spirituality can guide positively. Around 2500 years ago the original scribe of the Hebrew Book of Deuteronomy (30:19) tuned into “God” and wrote: “I call upon heaven and earth this day to witness that I have put before you blessings and curses; life and death. Choose life. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”

Yet while worship of Thanatos and Mammon dominate what’s too-neatly described as normal public discourse, it is not life that’s routinely chosen over death; it is too seldom that “blessings” (including those of an otherwise abundant planet) are chosen over short-term gain and greed.

Somehow (and “how” is for another day), the normalisation of war, war readiness, world domination of governments by the weapons industries, is ruthlessly maintained, including by so-called democratic governments, and the world’s most powerful media. Add in state-sanctioned violence including ceaseless plundering of the planet, the calculated impoverishment and dispossession of millions, the abandonment of all Indigenous peoples to post-imperialist ambition, and a dark, corrosive disregard for the fate of the world’s children, and we may hear that same passage with new ears.

The choices are ours. It is life that we want. Surely, it is life that we want? And will act to protect? We can take heart, after all, and in the midst of agonising grief for our local Jewish communities, that the hero of this corrosively tragic Bondi Beach Channukah Sunday was Syrian-Australian Muslim, Ahmed al-Ahmed.

There are lessons to be taken from all the major events of 2025.

The primary lesson surely being that we cannot afford to indulge any ideologies that fatally divide us. We cannot afford to pretend that only the lives of our tribe count or matter. Or that accepted normality and consideration of others does not apply to us.

While those “most like us” may be precious in singular ways, we have no right to deny legitimacy and life to others we regard as “unlike us”.  This is more than a political choice; it is basic humanism. It is Ethics101. It is the rich ground of spirituality and meaning.

Bigotry and race hatred are learned. They are not natural. They are not defensible. We cannot afford them. As long as our progress towards healthy pluralism is overtly threatened by a bleakly familiar form of authoritarianism that would re-marginalise all the familiar groups that zealots routinely target, those of us who care about human survival must grow up, wake up, make choices collectively and overtly.

Othering or dehumanising any group within our human family is humanity’s original and continuing gravest flaw. But war, genocide, bigotry, and race-hatred all depend on that horrible lie that only some are deserving of life, while others are not.

Fundamentalism(s) have become one of the most endangering forces on earth. They obliterate conscience as well as consciousness; they deny our needs to question. Each version offers a mirage of safety. It is, though, when religion as ideology congeals into an insane belief that wrongdoing is endorsed or even applauded by a solipsistic version of God, that all of humanity is most endangered.

2025 shows the urgency of comprehending where difference is weaponised rather than celebrated, and where religion is used to justify deadly dehumanisation. Christianity has a bleak history of harm. This makes it all the more moving to take heed of Pope Leo, following the footsteps of his predecessor Pope Francis: “We belong to one human family, one in origin and one in final goal…”  Alone among world leaders, Leo asserts it is religious leaders who must say no to war and yes to peace. It is also the immeasurably vast “us” who must do so: no to war and yes to peace_._

A new year waits. Your efforts matter.