The Year of Storytellers: 2023 Outlook
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The Year of the Storytellers
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February 2023
The world is resetting.
The last few years have been incredibly tumultuous. In a relatively short amount of time, humanity has had to contend with a rash of acute and protracted crises - a global pandemic, the intensifying ravages of climate change, war, and economic turmoil, to name just a few. As these different pressure points intersect and interlock, they are driving us towards a collective social, political, and economic inflection point.
To begin, we’re seeing growing fissures in neoliberalism, which has profoundly shaped our economic and social lives since the 1970s. In tandem with this progressively visible unraveling of the neoliberal hegemony - and perhaps even as a result of it - we’re seeing a rise in minilateralism. Finally, in a world where information is instantaneous, diffused, and always open to interpretation, we think that those who tell the better story will come out ahead - economically and politically.
This is why, at the end of the day, we believe that 2023 will be the year of the storytellers.
In homage to these storytellers, we have organized our analysis of the year ahead according to five archetypes of a really good tale - The Plot Twist, The Unsung Heroes, The Shapeshifter, The Nemeses, and The Villain - because, ultimately, reality is usually far more intriguing than any work of fiction.
Read more in Botho’s 2023 Outlook here.