WHEN THE WORLD CHANGES AND WE DO NOT

17 February 2026

WHEN THE WORLD CHANGES AND WE DO NOT

1. This Poster And The Feeling Behind It

An image such as this, despite its surface references to theology or food or drink, is not really about those things at all. It is about loss. It compresses a complicated historical process into a simple moral drama in which everything familiar appears under attack and someone else is presented as the cause.

That story carries emotional force, particularly in later life when there is more time to observe change rather than simply adapt to it. Streets look different. Accents sound unfamiliar. Shop fronts change. It can genuinely feel as though the country once known has shifted beyond recognition. There is truth in the perception of change.

Immigration into the UK today sits within a much longer imperial and economic arc. After the war, Britain invited Commonwealth labour, including the Windrush generation, to rebuild the country and staff institutions such as the newly created Health Service. Later, Britain accepted Ugandan Asians under legal and moral obligations. In the late twentieth century, labour mobility deepened under globalisation, particularly after EU expansion and the growth of finance, universities and health care recruitment.

High inflows are therefore not an isolated accident but a feature of an economy integrated for decades into global capital and labour markets. History shows that empires under fiscal strain and global entanglement often struggle to control population flows. Immigration in such circumstances becomes a symptom of structural forces rather than a tap that can simply be turned off. To attempt to do so abruptly would mean shrinking the economy and retreating from a global system Britain itself helped to build.

At the same time, while most migrant communities over time have integrated into the wider legal and cultural framework while retaining elements of their heritage, there are concerns that a minority within more recent, strongly ideologically motivated movements have been more resistant to integration, maintaining parallel norms and advocating forms of religious law that sit in tension with the supremacy of British civil law. This raises legitimate questions about cohesion and the principle that one sovereign legal system must apply equally to all.

Before accepting a narrative of civilisational collapse, however, it is worth considering whether some of the discomfort arises not only from external change but also from an internal struggle to adjust to it.

2. Building A Life Versus Living Inside It

Most of adult life is spent building - career, family, identity and routine. That phase is active and outward looking. Retirement alters the rhythm. There is more space for reflection and comparison between past and present.

If identity has been tightly bound to a particular era or cultural atmosphere, then demographic change can feel like personal erasure. If identity rests on deeper foundations than a single historical moment, change can be approached as something to understand rather than something to fight.

Global trade, decolonisation, capital flows and labour mobility cannot be reversed any more than ageing itself can be reversed. The economic dynamics associated with late stage empire are structural. Daily resentment does not alter them.

The underlying choice in later life is whether to expend energy resisting historical currents or to cultivate steadiness within them.

3. The Hidden Side Of Anger

When individuals confront forces far larger than themselves, anger can provide a sense of clarity and strength. It simplifies complexity and assigns responsibility. Yet sustained anger often conceals deeper anxieties - fear of decline, fear of irrelevance, fear that the world is moving forward without one’s participation.

Demographic change can become a symbol of those fears. New languages, new customs and new generations serve as reminders that time moves on. Facing that reality calmly requires a different kind of strength from blaming visible outsiders. The latter may feel momentarily satisfying, but it rarely produces peace.

4. Meaning Beyond The Headlines

Retirement can narrow perspective or enlarge it. Time once consumed by work can be used to rehearse grievances or to mentor, read more widely, engage with history in greater depth, converse across differences, keep a reflective journal or even write a biography that integrates a lifetime of experience.

A country shaped by empire and global trade was never destined to remain static. Movement and exchange have long been part of its fabric. Recognising this does not require endorsement of every policy choice; it simply removes the temptation to interpret structural change as a personal attack.

With that shift, energy becomes available for adaptation rather than defence. Identity ceases to be a fragile relic and becomes something capable of evolution.

5. The Choice In Later Life

Later life presents a quiet but profound decision. One path hardens around what once was. The other integrates what now is.

Hardening can initially feel strong and principled, yet over time it often produces isolation and bitterness. Integration may feel unsettling at first, but it tends to lead towards calm, proportion and perspective.

Memories and affections for earlier decades need not be abandoned. They can remain valued chapters within a longer narrative. Historians divide the past into periods for a reason; each era forms a section of a larger story. The Britain of the Swinging Sixties was not the Britain of the Victorian age, and the present is not the 1960s.

History moves. Economies evolve. Populations shift. These currents cannot be stopped by indignation alone. What can be chosen is the stance taken towards them.

Retirement need not become a daily referendum on what has been lost. It can instead become a stage of clarity, proportion and even quiet enjoyment, once the assumption is released that the world must remain as it was for life to retain meaning.

Peace often arrives not through winning the argument, but through stepping beyond it.

REFERENCES

http://www.livingintheair.org/2026/01/the-economics-of-late-stage-empire.html

http://www.livingintheair.org/2025/12/nothing-can-be-done-about-immigration.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmscnUliBs&list=WL&index=1&pp=iAQBsAgC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TdC9Xd76UM&list=WL&index=2&pp=iAQBsAgC