Mohsin Hamid at Georgetown University Global Dialogues:
When it comes to our understanding of the world, we are all like the blind men in the story of the blind men and the elephant. We each know the elephant from our own small vantage point, and what we know is partial and prone to distortions. It is from speaking to one another, reading one another, that a more accurate picture appears. Unfortunately, too often, those we speak to and read come from places very close to ours, whether physically or ideologically, and so the elephant we see together looks to us uncannily like something else, like a wall or a weapon or a trophy, perhaps. I would like to describe the elephant, the world, as I perceive it from my vantage point in Lahore, Pakistan, in the early months of the year 2024. I do this in the hope that each of us, in describing it, helps all of us see it a little better.
The first thing that strikes me about the world is that it is has become poisonous. We cannot breathe. From November until February the blue sky is hidden behind a low ceiling of grey. This is not from clouds but from smoke. It is uncanny to take a flight in these months, to burst only seconds after take-off into the blindingly bright light and see not a city but a grey blanket below.
More here.