ZEITGEIST BECAME A PLURAL

Iran's military intervention against Israel amounted to an unconvincing demonstration. Actually Teheran lost face. It couldn't have been otherwise, since the threshold of sustainable intentions was already crossed some time ago. Everybody partners with Armageddon, but in the end some form of justice prevails when vital interests must be shielded at any price from becoming an endangered species.

Conflicts multiply--Sahel, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar--out of the reach of close scrutiny, while others drag on in the murky waters of world diplomacy. The cynical games around Ukraine or Gaza will only stop through mutual exhaustion, not because a rational outcome has been found.

The former, accepted world order is dead. Soon we will be talking of the good old times of the Cold War, wherein the roles were distributed without too much opposition and wherein a benevolent American producer assumed the responsibility of the casting. Today the grand interpreters of some Zeitgeist or another sit with broken pieces. Zeitgeists multiply and compete.

In reality we all keep losing former ironclad friends, not out of bad intentions but because we no longer trust our very own judgement. We have entered the Brueghel painting "The blind leading the blinds", with one major difference: rest assured that the "blinds" who lead us to the abyss will save their own skins.