The central argument I would develop is that hope is not necessarily greatest where life is easiest, nor is pessimism necessarily greatest where life is hardest. Our expectations of the future are shaped by what we have experienced, what we believe we might gain, and what we fear losing.
There is also an important distinction between optimism and hope. Optimism is the expectation that things will improve. Hope is the belief that improvement remains possible, even when the evidence is discouraging.
Two findings are particularly important to the essay. Gallup International’s 2025 End-of-Year Survey found that younger respondents were considerably more optimistic than older respondents, with Kenya among the most hopeful countries. However, Africa’s regional results covered only three countries, so we should avoid generalizing to the entire continent.
The second finding requires a correction: Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2026 report found that 21% of the world’s population, not 10%, lived in countries classified as Free, compared with 46% two decades earlier. The decline is nevertheless extraordinary.
I have developed your ideas into an essay that connects these apparent contradictions.
Who Owns the Future?
Hope, Anxiety and the Generations Coming of Age
October 2026
I have often wondered why people who possess so much can be so anxious about the future, while those who have comparatively little sometimes approach it with remarkable optimism.
Perhaps the answer lies not in what we possess, but in what we expect.
The Gallup International End-of-Year Survey of 2025, part of a polling tradition extending back decades, offers a fascinating glimpse into this paradox. As the world looked towards 2026, optimism was strongest among younger people and across much of the Global South. Older people, particularly in Western Europe, were considerably more pessimistic.
Globally, 37% expected the coming year to be better, while 25% anticipated deterioration. Among those younger than 34, optimism substantially outweighed pessimism. Among those older than 55, the balance was reversed.
Kenya emerged as one of the world’s most optimistic countries. Meanwhile, prosperous European societies such as France, Germany, Belgium and Austria appeared deeply apprehensive about their economic and political futures.
How do we explain this?
Perhaps people in wealthy countries have become accustomed to stability, prosperity and predictable institutions. Their anxieties arise from the possibility that these achievements may be slipping away.
For younger people in developing societies, the psychological starting point may be quite different. They have grown up knowing uncertainty, and many believe that education, technology, migration or entrepreneurship could offer them opportunities unavailable to their parents.
One generation fears losing what it has inherited. Another hopes to acquire what it has never possessed.
Yet geography alone cannot explain optimism.
Iran: When education does not guarantee hope
Consider Iran.
It possesses a substantial educated population, distinguished universities, a long intellectual tradition and generations of young people whose aspirations extend far beyond their national borders.
Yet educational achievement has not necessarily translated into confidence about the future.
Research among Iranian medical residents has revealed striking levels of interest in emigration, driven by economic pressures, professional dissatisfaction and uncertainty about career prospects. Other surveys suggest that many Iranians believe their younger generation has little confidence in its future within the country.
Here we encounter a troubling contradiction.
Education is traditionally regarded as a pathway towards opportunity. But what happens when a society produces highly educated young people while restricting the economic, professional and political opportunities through which they might fulfil their ambitions?
Education may actually intensify frustration.
An Iranian medical graduate may possess the knowledge, ambition and professional abilities of a contemporary in Germany or Canada, yet experience a profoundly different sense of control over the future.
For some, hope becomes geographically displaced.
Their optimism is not necessarily about Iran’s immediate prospects, but about the possibility of building a life elsewhere.
This raises an uncomfortable question: Can a country be rich in human talent yet impoverished in hope?
Indonesia, Malaysia and India: The future as opportunity
Across much of Asia, a different relationship with the future is emerging.
Indonesia and Malaysia illustrate societies where economic development, technological change and expanding educational opportunities coexist with substantial inequalities and environmental vulnerabilities.
Surveys suggest that Indonesians are particularly receptive to artificial intelligence and its potential benefits. Malaysia similarly displays considerable enthusiasm for technological change.
These attitudes contrast with the growing apprehension about AI in many Western countries.
For a young Indonesian, artificial intelligence might represent access to knowledge, business opportunities or professional skills that previously required expensive institutions.
For an older European professional, the same technology might threaten an occupation built over several decades.
The technology is identical. Its perceived meaning is not.
India offers perhaps the most consequential example.
With more than 734 million people younger than 30, India possesses an enormous reservoir of youthful ambition.
Its expanding technological sector, educational aspirations and growing international influence encourage expectations of progress. Yet unemployment, educational inequality, environmental degradation and competition for professional opportunities remain formidable obstacles.
India’s demographic advantage is therefore not an automatic economic dividend.
A large youthful population can become a source of extraordinary innovation and productivity. But without sufficient employment, education and social mobility, it can also become a source of frustration.
The question is whether India can convert its demographic potential into meaningful opportunity before that window begins to narrow.
Climate change: Has the future’s greatest threat been forgotten?
For much of the past decade, climate change dominated discussions about the future.
Young people were repeatedly reminded that they would inherit a planet experiencing rising temperatures, extreme weather, environmental degradation and ecological uncertainty.
Now artificial intelligence seems to have displaced climate change in the public imagination.
Suddenly, conversations about the future revolve around automation, disappearing professions, algorithms, enormous data centres and the concentration of technological power.
But climate change has not disappeared simply because public attention has shifted.
Indeed, the two transformations are becoming increasingly interconnected.
Artificial intelligence requires electricity, computing infrastructure, cooling systems and substantial material resources. The expansion of data centres raises important questions about energy demand, water consumption and environmental sustainability.
Meanwhile, climate change is already shaping the lives of young people in countries such as India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
A 2025 Malaysian youth survey found that approximately 94% of respondents worried about climate change. Many had already experienced flooding, extreme weather or other environmental disruptions.
What is especially interesting is that anxiety about climate change does not necessarily eliminate optimism about life.
Research across countries has found that people in emerging and developing economies can simultaneously express greater concern about climate change and greater hope that solutions remain possible.
Perhaps the distinction is between fear and helplessness.
Young people may recognize the seriousness of environmental threats while retaining confidence in their capacity to respond.
The opposite of hope is not fear. It is the conviction that nothing we do can make a difference.
John Simpson and the illusion of unprecedented times
The veteran BBC journalist John Simpson offers a particularly valuable historical perspective.
During six decades of reporting, Simpson witnessed events that fundamentally transformed international politics.
He accompanied Ayatollah Khomeini on his return to Tehran in 1979, witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, reported from Tiananmen Square and observed the disintegration of the Soviet order.
Each represented a moment when apparently permanent political arrangements suddenly became vulnerable.
For those who lived through the Cold War, the possibility of nuclear confrontation was not theoretical. The division of Europe seemed permanent. Apartheid appeared deeply entrenched. The Soviet Union seemed an enduring geopolitical reality.
Yet the Berlin Wall fell. Apartheid ended. The Soviet Union dissolved.
Simpson’s experiences remind us that history rarely proceeds in the orderly fashion imagined by those living through it.
What appears immovable today may become tomorrow’s historical curiosity.
But history also offers a warning.
The overthrow of an authoritarian government does not necessarily produce a democratic society.
Iran’s revolution is a powerful illustration. The departure of the Shah did not produce the political freedoms many participants had anticipated.
The same historical event can represent liberation to one generation and the beginning of another form of repression to the next.
Progress is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
The authoritarian paradox
This brings us to one of the most disturbing developments of our time.
Freedom House’s 2026 report documented another year of declining global freedom, continuing a deterioration extending across two decades.
Only about one-fifth of humanity now lives in countries classified as Free.
Africa presents an especially striking contradiction.
Countries such as Kenya demonstrate considerable optimism about the future, even as political freedoms across substantial parts of the continent remain under pressure.
Military governments, restrictions on opposition movements, weakened institutions and constraints on freedom of expression have become prominent features of the political landscape in several African countries.
The Middle East presents an even more severe challenge to political liberty.
Yet optimism and political freedom are not interchangeable measures.
A young person may be optimistic about personal advancement while remaining deeply dissatisfied with political institutions.
Equally, someone living in a functioning democracy may enjoy extensive civil liberties while feeling profoundly pessimistic about the future.
This distinction matters.
Economic opportunity can generate hope, but enduring human flourishing requires more than income.
It requires dignity, personal autonomy, the ability to question authority and the freedom to imagine a different society.
A government may deliver economic growth without political liberty. Whether such growth can sustain hope across generations is another question.
The graduating class of 2027
Imagine two young people graduating from secondary school in 2027.
One lives in France, Germany or another prosperous European country.
The other lives in Kenya, India or Indonesia.
The European graduate inherits advantages that should not be underestimated: established educational institutions, healthcare systems, public infrastructure, legal protections and, in many cases, substantial social security.
Yet this graduate also faces an increasingly uncertain professional landscape.
Artificial intelligence may transform entry-level employment. Housing is expensive in many cities. Economic growth is sluggish in parts of Europe. Political polarization, migration debates, climate change and international conflict contribute to a sense of instability.
The young European may wonder whether achieving the living standards of their parents will be possible.
The graduate in Kenya or India may begin with considerably fewer material advantages.
Educational opportunities may be unequal. Employment may be precarious. Social protections may be limited. Political institutions may be less dependable.
Yet this young person may see possibilities where the European sees threats.
Technology can expand access to knowledge. Economic development may create new industries. International mobility can open previously inaccessible pathways.
But optimism should not be romanticized.
A young African graduate confronting unemployment, political repression or environmental disaster cannot live on hope alone.
Nor should the relative pessimism of wealthy societies obscure the enormous advantages their young people continue to enjoy.
The crucial distinction is between the objective opportunities available to a person and that person’s subjective expectations of the future.
These are related, but they are not identical.
What, then, is hope?
Perhaps we have misunderstood the relationship between prosperity and optimism.
Prosperity provides security, but security can create expectations that become increasingly difficult to satisfy.
Poverty creates hardship, but the possibility of escaping hardship can also generate powerful aspirations.
Age adds another dimension.
Older people possess memories of earlier political arrangements, economic conditions and social expectations. Their pessimism may reflect comparisons with a past they believe was more predictable.
Young people have fewer such memories.
For them, the future remains largely unwritten.
Yet we should be cautious about assuming that optimism belongs exclusively to youth or pessimism to age.
The older person has something the younger person lacks: historical perspective.
Someone who has witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid or the transformation of formerly impoverished societies understands that seemingly impossible changes can occur.
That knowledge may be one of the strongest foundations for hope.
As the graduating class of 2027 prepares to enter adulthood, its members will inherit a world shaped simultaneously by artificial intelligence, climate change, demographic transformation and political uncertainty.
Some will begin life with extraordinary material advantages but diminished expectations.
Others will begin with formidable disadvantages but remarkable ambition.
Neither group has a monopoly on hope.
Ultimately, the most important question may not be whether young people are optimistic about the future.
It may be whether the societies they inherit will provide them with the freedom, education, institutions and opportunities necessary to transform their optimism into reality.
Hope is a human capacity. Opportunity is a social achievement. And the future depends on bringing the two together.
Evidence and interpretation
Several findings make the essay’s central argument particularly persuasive.
1. The age divide is substantial. Gallup International’s 2025 survey found a net hope score of +28 among respondents younger than 34, compared with −6 among those aged 55 and older. Kenya recorded +67, while Austria recorded −26. These are net balances between optimistic and pessimistic responses, not percentages of optimistic individuals.
2. Iran challenges the assumption that education produces optimism. A multicentre study of 254 Iranian medical residents found that 81.5% expressed willingness to emigrate. A separate Iranian public-opinion survey reported widespread pessimism about young people’s prospects. These findings concern particular samples and questions rather than a definitive measure of national hope.
3. Asian attitudes towards technology are notably different. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index documents substantial enthusiasm for AI in Southeast Asia, alongside increasing anxiety about its consequences in several other countries. This supports treating technological change as both an opportunity and a threat.
4. Climate concern and hope can coexist. A study covering 30 countries found that Indonesia, Nigeria and India were among the most hopeful regarding climate change, while several wealthy European countries were among the least hopeful. The Malaysian UNICEF survey provides further evidence that climate change remains a major concern for young people.
5. India’s demographic potential is enormous but conditional. The 2025 Our Future India report identifies climate change, AI, urbanization, demographic change and geopolitics as interconnected challenges. It emphasizes that young people need opportunities to participate in shaping the country’s future.
A final consideration
I would resist ending this essay with the familiar claim that young people are naturally optimistic because they have their whole lives ahead of them.
There is a more interesting argument here, particularly from a medical-anthropological perspective.
Hope is culturally situated. It is shaped by family expectations, collective memories, religion, migration opportunities, political institutions and the perceived relationship between individual effort and social reward.
An Iranian medical student contemplating emigration, a Kenyan graduate hoping to establish a business, and a French graduate anxious about professional displacement may all be responding rationally to their respective circumstances.
Their differences are not simply differences in personality or temperament. They reflect different social constructions of what the future makes possible.
the geography of hope tells us something not only about how people feel, but about how societies distribute the possibility of a better future.
