World affairs are often described as a procession of turning points—moments when history bends, decisively, in a new direction. Yet they are rarely announced as such at the time. They arrive disguised as chaos, outrage, or exhaustion.
The shocking scenes from Minneapolis, broadcast across the world, felt disturbingly familiar, echoing images from the Middle East and Ukraine over the past two years. Different contexts, different causes, yet the same raw choreography of power, protest, violence and grief.
History is not only made up of turning points, but also of missed ones. Moments when “enough” should have been enough, when restraint should have reasserted itself, when institutions should have held. Instead, lines of acceptable behaviour, governance and public discourse are pushed to what we assume is their outer limit—only to be pushed a little further still. Each time, we recalibrate. Each time, we normalise what would once have been unthinkable.
A true turning point is not just an event; it is a collective psychological shift. It is the moment when the accumulation of injustice becomes intolerable, when the moral cost outweighs fear, convenience or fatigue. But such moments are becoming harder to recognise in real time, drowned out by the constant churn of outrage and counter-outrage.
This global unease is taking a toll on our shared psyche. Our waking thoughts are increasingly occupied by the decisions, impulses and grievances of one or two individuals on the other side of the world. There is something faintly absurd about this—and yet entirely logical.
We are more culturally and informationally intertwined than at any point in history. We shared COVID as a single, relentless global story, consumed simultaneously for more than two years.
Now we share disquiet and disgust in much the same way: killings, injuries and injustices delivered to us in high definition, filmed on phones, impossible to look away from.
We sometimes blame ourselves for watching, for caring, for letting it bother us. But this exposure is also a form of witness. The danger is not that we see too much, but that we become numbed.
So the question lingers: when is the turning point? Will there be one? Or have we become cowed by the perceived might of bullies—state and non-state alike—mistaking their volume for permanence?
History suggests that turning points do come. But only when enough people decide, simultaneously, that this really is as far as it can go.
