By: Dion Chang
Six Key Trend Pillars Shaping 2025
The annual Flux Trend briefing – The State We’re In – is an executive summary of where the world is, and where it’s heading. Using the acronym T.R.E.N.D.S. – representing six trend pillars shaping how we will live, work and interact in the coming year – the trend briefing identifies trends that businesses need to watch and tracks the ripple effects of previous game-changing trends we’ve identified.
The State We’re In 2025
STEPPING INTO THE VOID: Confidence Amidst Uncertainty
Last year’s SWI title was “Aftershocks”, describing the recalibration process businesses were experiencing post-pandemic. COVID lockdown seems like a distant memory, but we are only really beginning to understand the gears of change that were set in motion when the world stopped. In many ways, it was the calm in the eye of the storm.
“Polycrisis” was the word of the year in 2022 and since then it feels as if we’ve been on a treadmill of polycrises. Flux takes a different view. There are messages in the madness.
Transformational events taken in isolation seem catastrophic. It’s only when you step back that you can see patterns emerging. We track trends over long periods of time and see, not just patterns, but seismic change afoot. Whether they are positive or negative depends on how you view and react to them.
American author Charles Eisenstein wrote, “In a process of breakdown, we are repeatedly invited personally and collectively to step into a different story (e.g. a different worldview, a different identity, a different understanding of what’s real).
These aren’t addressed by doing more cleverly what we’ve already been doing. Some fundamental shift is beginning to happen. And these days, it’s a choice that is being offered to us more and more starkly.”
Not acknowledging the choice being offered to us makes the change process more challenging but stepping into the Void is stepping into a necessary place of initiatory transformation. It requires moving with confidence into uncertainty.
The Flux mantra is, “To change the world, you first need to understand it”
Here are some key trends that you will encounter once you step into the void.
TECHNOLOGY: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”
The phrase, “objects in the mirror are closer than they appear” is a standard safety warning etched into the side-view mirrors of cars. It warns drivers that while the convex mirror allows for a wider field of view, it simultaneously makes objects smaller and further away.
The same can be said of the speed of technology. It evolves faster than you think. Two years after generative AI was unleashed, the pendulum has swung from the technology being viewed as apocalyptic, to a utopian tool that would free humanity to flex their dormant creativity. Both versions are now emerging.
The first wave of AI redundancy has started, but so has using AI as a weapon for good (from frustrating scammers to medical diagnoses).
“Interactive AI” – when AI and robotics merge – has also arrived. Spot, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, seemed like science fiction three years ago. Today, the robo-dog has been integrated into the Chinese police force for street patrols.
RETAIL & MARKETING: Live Stream Social Selling and Parmesan Bandits
The evolution of e-commerce to social commerce to live stream social commerce has been as fast as its growth. Last year we highlighted the explosion of “influencer farms” where live-streamed hard selling is not only commercialised, but mass-produced. This in turn has created new shortcuts for last-mile delivery goals.
Dark stores are so 2012. “Family warehouses” are now taking their place: mini fulfilment centres run from people’s garages or living rooms to make ends meet.
The cost-of-living crisis has also created a spike in shoplifting. The Parmesan Bandit is a sexy term for a broader trend of middle-class shoplifters. Last year it was olive oil. Shoplifting is usually impulsive, driven by inflation and a shrinking grocery basket.
But a dangerous justification for shoplifting is growing: a rage against inequality as well as large corporations who “can afford the shrinkage”. One retailer described the rise in shoplifting succinctly: “Middle-class petty theft is death by a thousand cuts.”
ECONOMY: Raise the drawbridge, the taxman cometh
Last year saw the rise of Homeland Economics – aka “strategic autonomy” or “economic security”. In essence, an inward-looking focus to reduce the risks to a country’s economy and a buffer to volatile geopolitics. In 2025 geopolitical dynamics are set to become even more complex with the increased threat of conflict zones around the world and the impact of the second Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) – a joint initiative of the OECD and UNDP – signals a “doctors without borders” approach to global auditing, which is designed to, “support developing countries to strengthen national tax administrations and tax audit capacity”.
This dovetails with a move for global “tax harmonising”, a call to adjust tax systems of different jurisdictions and create global compatibility of taxation.
This would limit tax havens for the wealthy who, incidentally, are currently dealing with a global butler shortage, which is not as flippant as it sounds. It exposes new undercurrents to growing global inequality and expat nomads.
NATURAL WORLD: Looming Water Wars and Eco Chaplins
South Africans, and Capetonians particularly, understand the threat of water scarcity, but globally natural water shortages have started to create cross-border tensions which brings the reality of “water wars” one step closer.
Nine international river basins on the planet where conflict has started, or the potential for armed conflict is high, have now been flagged as potential water war zones. Each of these flashpoints involves cojoined countries, many of which are already in volatile political situations.
In the Arctic, the permafrost that has kept the planet’s temperature cool is now contributing to greenhouse gasses as it thaws. Exposed organic matter is starting to decompose releasing methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Communities who live in this region are becoming climate refugees as “thaw slumps” literally cause the ground around their homes to fall away.
It’s no surprise that the role of an Eco-Chaplin is rising: a different type of spiritual advisor who responds to climate grief, eco-anxiety and facilitates community conversations about climate change.
DIPLOMACY: Be prepared, just in case.
2024 was the largest election year in history – 64 countries (including 17 African countries) went to the polls and the results were game-changing, as we witnessed in South Africa. The aftermath of this global political shift will unfold in 2025.
For now, the mood is jittery. Nordic countries have begun public service campaigns on how to prepare for war and unexpected crises. The talk of conscription is also spreading to countries that are bracing themselves. But conscription is changing.
The Philippine army is recruiting young tech civilians to fight cyberattacks. Technological warfare is the new battleground, with added nuances like tracking crypto-funded terror, political deepfakes and misinformation to sway elections.
While internet-based warfare is a reality, space warfare is the new frontier. The US has voiced concern at the pace at which China is developing military capabilities in space by launching multiple satellites designed to support targeting systems for missions on Earth. Calm and skilful diplomacy will be needed in 2025.
SOCIO-CULTURAL: The 4B movement and the New Nuclear Family
There is a seismic shift in social contracts propelled by multiple trends including gender politics, declining birth rates and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
4B is a radical feminist movement that started in South Korea. The four B’s are references to Korean terms regarding marriage, childbirth, dating and sexual relationships. The movement’s ethos took hold in America after the elections with terms like “heteropessimism” added to the mix – women reconciling their heterosexual existence with a world they view as inherently misogynistic.
The child-free movement, which has gained momentum globally is also creating pause for thought amongst young people faced with the traditional markers of adulthood – marriage and settling down, but with no hope of ever owning property or affording children.
New variations of a nuclear family are mushrooming. Friends are marrying friends for tax benefits and home loans, while communal living is growing. As global birthrates decline (except on the African continent) the new nuclear family will inevitably include a pet, as the pet parenting economy booms.
