Beyond the ‘Word of the Year’: Why 2026 needs a ‘Value of the Year’ and what should it be?

With the first sunrise of 2026, parts of 2025 slip into history. Yet many markers of the past year will continue to shape the present and future. Each year is remembered through defining events, personalities, and increasingly through a “Word of the Year.”  In 2025, Merriam-Webster chose “slop” to describe low-quality AI content. Oxford selected “rage bait” for deliberately provocative online material, and Cambridge picked “parasocial” to capture one-sided relationships with celebrities, influencers, and AI. These words may remain relevant. But what is discussed far less are values.

Have we ever considered a “Value of the Year”? Unlike words or trends, values do not expire at year’s end. A core ethical value, if chosen consciously, can guide societies not just for a year, but for decades.

Imagine a national or global event of 2025 which you want to erase from your memory in 2026 and ask: why do we act only after destruction? Why do responses follow calamities rather than prevent them? Why does negligence gain attention only after lives are lost? And if democracy is about people, why does it so often serve only the powerful? These questions are connected, and they point to a missing value.

Air Pollution in NCR (File image)

One of the most pressing issues of 2025, likely to persist into 2026, is air pollution. Delhi and the NCR continue to choke. Measures are taken, but mostly as crisis responses. Despite policy debates and technical solutions, one value remains sidelined in decision-making: empathy. Why does empathy remain selective rather than collective?

Elon Musk has framed this sharply: “We need to have empathy that is deep, not shallow.” The question is where such empathy comes from.

Post-COVID society appears more brittle and anxious. Futurist Jamais Cascio describes this shift through the BANI framework, Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible, replacing the older VUCA model (VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). This is the world of BANI, which urges us to understand and address the human condition, not merely systems and institutions. The BANI world suggests that humanity has become fragile or brittle, appearing strong on the surface but hollow within, resting on a weak foundation.

In this sense, Musk is right when he speaks of shallow empathy. We are leading lives bound by the values of buying and selling, and consequently, empathy is crumbling. This fragility is making both the common man and the chosen one more anxious, surrounded by unending restlessness. Stress now envelops us like rising AQI levels, diminishing our ability to cope with and manage personal suffering. Anxiety has replaced reason with impulsiveness in decision-making.

We are becoming increasingly self-centered and apathetic. We concern ourselves only with our own problems and remain detached until an issue knocks on our own door. When a blast occurs, a bridge collapses, or people die due to human error in accidents or hospitals, no one seems bothered. Only when a chosen one is among the victims, or when the death toll is high, does the system awaken.

We witnessed this behavioral pattern during stampedes, and now we see it with air pollution, which is discussed daily. Yet neither masks nor effective remedial measures are seriously adopted.

Whether in governance or civil life, empathy must be at the center of decision-making.

In the BANI world, long-term and well-planned decision-making has become non-linear, where events appear unrelated and inconsistent. Structural frameworks are weakening, and everything feels urgent. Consequently, we neither bother to comprehend long-term plans nor empathetically reflect on why humanity, in its search for meaning, is moving toward such uncertainty and cruelty. Why is human life becoming entangled in air pollution and the fear of being forced to leave one’s city?

Jamais Cascio describes this as an incomprehensible situation, one in which even the world’s most intelligent individuals are becoming weak, restless, indecisive, and bewildered. So what is to be done? Should we return to empathy and resilience that extend beyond individual lives to encompass humanity as a whole? An empathy that makes humanity more humane, recognizing that while bombs can destroy cities, the true value of life lies in the universal development of humanity.

In a pressure-driven world, where we search for empathy, a person’s spirituality and sense of being human become crucial. Musk concludes: “Shallow empathy is caring about criminals, but deep empathy is caring about the victims of criminals. Why do we have repeat violent offenders released onto the streets, often with no bail? It’s crazy. They prey upon innocent people. Then our streets are not safe.”

In matters of life and death, timing is everything, and people are not data points. They are not meant merely to be computed but to be connected. AI cannot do this. Only human beings can, and only through empathy which leads to compassion and community care. Like the Femur story. The “femur story” is a famous anecdote attributed to anthropologist Margaret Mead, explaining that a healed femur, or thigh bone, is the first sign of civilization because it proves a wounded individual received help. Unlike in the wild, where a broken leg means death, it highlights that compassion and community care are the foundations of humanity, not just tools or technology.

A broken femur means certain death. No animal can survive, hunt, or escape predators with this injury.

A healed femur proves someone was cared for, fed, and protected during weeks of recovery.

"The first sign of civilization is a healed femur—it shows that someone helped a fellow human through difficulty."

The foundation of humanity, not tools or technology

So, will empathy show us the path of humanity in 2026 and should it be declared the value of the year? Let us hope so. But one thing is certain: it does not require any dictionary to vote for it. Only humanity is needed. Let us also choose our own values, just like New Year resolutions, and commit to holding on to them through the year, adding more values along the way.

What is your ‘value of the year’? Share it with us.

(The writer is the author of ‘Being Good’, ‘Aaiye, Insaan Banaen’, ‘Kyon’ and ‘Ethikos: Stories Searching Happiness’. He teaches courses on and offers training in ethics, values and behaviour. He has been the expert/consultant to UPSC, SAARC countries, Civil services Academy, National Centre for Good Governance, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Competition Commission of India (CCI), etc. He has PhD in two disciplines and has been a Doctoral Fellow in Gandhian Studies from ICSSR. His second PhD is from IIT Delhi on Ethical Decision Making among Indian Bureaucrats. He writes for the UPSC Ethics Simplified (concepts and caselets) fortnightly.)

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