Somebody sent me a meme about the current status of the Year of the Horse. It was a “How it started; how it’s going” kind of thing based on those folded pictures we drew as kids. I think it was called Exquisite Horse. You know the ones: each section is drawn by a different person and gets folded over and over. The final product is a composite image that tells its own story.
The horse in the meme starts out pretty brilliantly. It’s drawn with incredible verisimilitude – anatomically correct, fantastic haunches, a wonderful brushed and glossy tail. The next section is considerably less impressive, technically speaking. I don’t think the centre can hold, the front legs are positively wonky and, by the time we have reached the horse’s pinhead, any resemblance to the equine glory of the first fold is entirely gone. It looks like a 2-year-old’s crayon rendition of the great quadruped’s head. And that, my friends, is the visual representation of 2026 thus far.
I get the feeling that the current standoff in the Strait of Hormuz is being strategically planned with all the acuity and deftness of a pouty toddler throwing his crayons all over the situation room every time somebody says no to his latest genius idea. It’s a race to the bottom with these guys. If they aren’t hoarding all the toys or stealing everyone’s lunch money, they’re bullying their way to the top of the jungle gym with all the grace and finesse of those kids that terrorised you on the playground while the adults were off smoking around the corner.
It’s the same wherever you look, down to your basic street-corner altercation in Emmarentia. The so-called adults pulled guns on each other because they still haven’t learnt how to share the road. A mother thought escalation was the correct lesson she wanted to impart to her kids, so their father ended up bleeding out in front of them.
I think Lemuel Gulliver got it right: horses are a better bet than humans. In Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels, that fantastical, epic journey, he encounters the Houyhnhnms. They’re a society of intelligent, rational horses that live with the Yahoos, filthy, irrational, human-like, subordinate creatures. Jonathan Swift’s satire of human brutality and hypocrisy lands perfectly in the Year of the Horse. In this land, the horses rule. They treat Yahoos as the beasts they’ve proven themselves to be in comparison to the horses who value logic, truth and virtue above all. Quite.
How to respond to the unfolding madness of 2026 without giving in to despair and cynicism? How to keep cool in the face of all the Yahoos? Plato has some horses for us too. His charioteer metaphor argues that we human souls are like a chariot pulled by two horses. One horse represents the rational, moral one, aspiring to higher order, heroic ideals. It is spirited, honourable and virtuous. The other horse pulls in the opposite direction. It’s driven by raw desire, animal lust and base appetites: greed, hunger, sexual desire, anger and road rage. It is uncontrollable and pulls the chariot down to the baser instincts. These horses show the internal conflict between our higher selves, the Houyhnhnms, and the baser selves, the Yahoos. The only way through, the only way to get the chariot on the road, is for the charioteer to drive the whole show forward with authority and discipline. Your mind is the charioteer and only you can take charge, otherwise the horses will take you where they will or nowhere at all.
If you want to escape the bleak and frankly slightly pathetic existence of the Yahoo beast, best you take charge of your mind. How? Dressage, the fine art of equestrian training. Horse ballet. You can put your horse through its paces every day. Dressage develops a horse’s natural athletic ability, flexibility and obedience. It’s a subtle, harmonious art form. It is meditation in motion. Whatever you do, don’t let the horses bolt from the stables. And, for pity’s sake, keep the Yahoos well at bay.
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